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Copernicus' Secret - by Jack Repcheck (Paperback)

Copernicus' Secret - by  Jack Repcheck (Paperback)
Store: Target
Last Price: 15.99 USD

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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>Repcheck's riveting story tells of the enigmatic genius responsible for one of the most important scientific theories ever--and why it took several decades and a stranger's intervention before his groundbreaking "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres" was published.<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><b>Nicolaus Copernicus gave the world perhaps the most important scientific insight of the modern age, the theory that the earth and the other planets revolve around the sun.</b> He was also the first to proclaim that the earth rotates on its axis once every twenty-four hours. His theory was truly radical: during his lifetime nearly everyone believed that a perfectly still earth rested in the middle of the cosmos, where all the heavenly bodies revolved around it. <p/> One of the transcendent geniuses of the early Renaissance, Copernicus was also a flawed and conflicted person. A cleric who lived during the tumultuous years of the early Reformation, he may have been sympathetic to the teachings of the Lutherans. Although he had taken a vow of celibacy, he kept at least one mistress. Supremely confident intellectually, he hesitated to disseminate his work among other scholars. It fact, he kept his astronomical work a secret, revealing it to only a few intimates, and the manuscript containing his revolutionary theory, which he refined for at least twenty years, remained hidden among my things. <p/> It is unlikely that Copernicus' masterwork would ever have been published if not for a young mathematics professor named Georg Joachim Rheticus. He had heard of Copernicus' ideas, and with his imagination on fire he journeyed hundreds of miles to a land where, as a Lutheran, he was forbidden to travel. Rheticus' meeting with Copernicus in a small cathedral town in northern Poland proved to be one of the most important encounters in history. <p/> <i>Copernicus' Secret</i> recreates the life and world of the scientific genius whose work revolutionized astronomy and altered our understanding of our place in the world. It tells the surprising, little-known story behind the dawn of the scientific age.<p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br>Excellent...[Repcheck] is especially good at setting Copernicus vividly in his time. <p/> -- <i>NY Sun</i><br><br>No other biography of which I am aware treats the life of this scientific giant more vividly than this one. <p/> -- <i>New York Times Book Review</i><br><br>Repcheck paints a vivid picture of the times, in which both Protestantism and intellectual inquiry posed threats to the Catholic worldview. The author also does an admirable job of shining a light on Copernicus's little-known immediate predecessors to show that, like the works of Einstein and Darwin, the scientist's theory didn't spring Athena-like from his brow <p/> -- <i>Publishers Weekly</i><br>

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