cover image The First Copernican: Georg Joachim Rheticus and the Rise of the Copernican Revolution

The First Copernican: Georg Joachim Rheticus and the Rise of the Copernican Revolution

Dennis Richard Danielson, . . Walker, $25.95 (264pp) ISBN 978-0-8027-1530-2

The publication of Copernicus's theories on the structure of the solar system is a touchstone of the scientific revolution. But as Danielson shows in this fascinating account, Copernicus's work might have been lost without the assistance of a passionate young scholar named Georg Joachim Rheticus. Born in 1514, Rheticus, a German doctor's son, became a protégé of the mathematician Melanchthon, who said the youth was "born to study mathematics." Made a professor at the University of Wittenberg at the age of 22, Rheticus took a leave of absence in 1538 to track down Copernicus in Poland. Rheticus had seen a copy of a narrowly circulated short paper by Copernicus about a solar system with a stationary Sun and moving Earth, and had become obsessed with the idea. Although in his twilight years, the elder scientist welcomed the younger man, who persuaded him to pull his notes together to create his paradigm-breaking work, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres . Drawing on academic records and papers, Danielson, a professor of English at the University of British Columbia, gracefully recounts the compelling story of a scientist whose "sole interest was in reflecting, not deflecting, the light that shone from the mind of his teacher." B&w illus. (Nov.)