Heavenly Intrigue: Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and the Murder Behind One of History's Greatest Scientific DiscoveriesHeavenly Intrigue is the fascinating, true account of the seventeenth-century collaboration between Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe that revolutionized our understanding of the universe–and ended in murder.One of history’s greatest geniuses, Kepler laid the foundations of modern physics with his revolutionary laws of planetary motion. But his beautiful mind was beset by demons. Born into poverty and abuse, half-blinded by smallpox, he festered with rage, resentment, and a longing for worldly fame. Brahe, his mentor, was a flamboyant aristocrat who had spent forty years mapping the heavens with unprecedented accuracy–but he refused to share his data with Kepler. With Brahe’s untimely death in Prague in 1601, rumors flew across Europe that he had been murdered. But it took twentieth-century forensics to uncover the poison in his remains, and the detective work of Joshua and Anne-Lee Gilder to identify the prime suspect–the ambitious, envy-ridden Kepler himself. A fast-paced, true-life account that reads like a thriller, Heavenly Intrigue is a remarkable feat of historical re-creation. |
Contents
The Secret of the Universe | 96 |
Marriage | 112 |
Imperial Mathematician | 133 |
Intolerance | 147 |
Confrontation in Prague | 156 |
Bad Faith | 169 |
Tycho and Rudolf | 177 |
The Mästlin Affair | 183 |
Thirteen Hours | 216 |
The Elixir | 223 |
The Motive and the Means | 235 |
Theft | 247 |
The Three Laws | 250 |
Epilogue | 258 |
Brahes Recipe for His Mercury Drug | 264 |
Notes | 269 |
The Pot Boils | 190 |
The Death of Tycho Brahe | 196 |
In the Crypt | 203 |
Revealing Symptoms | 209 |
286 | |
Illustration Credits | 297 |
298 | |
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Heavenly Intrigue: Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and the Murder Behind One ... Joshua Gilder,Anne-Lee Gilder No preview available - 2005 |
Common terms and phrases
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