The Life and Times of Tycho Brahe

📖 The Scoop

This book is a brief biography of one of the founding fathers of physics and astronomy. Tycho Brahe lived an extraordinary life in a royal family to life under self-exile. His profound curiosity to explore the night sky and make observations is unparalleled in the history of astronomy. His inventions of astronomical instruments before the telescope era for measuring the most precise positions of more than a thousand stars are remarkable achievements. His wealth of astronomical data collected for approximately 21 years provided a firm ground for Johannes Kepler to discover the planetary laws of motion, which opened the doors for Sir Isaac Newton to discover the laws of motion.

Tycho made the first direct measurements of a new star now known as Tycho’s supernova. The appearance of a new star opposed the established religious beliefs of the time. Modern scientific discoveries would not have been possible without his foundational work of two precious decades in the late sixteenth century. The book also shows rare pictures of his observatory, instruments, and places that give a true sense of the times in the late sixteenth century that shaped the future.

Genre: Science / History (fancy, right?)