Heaven on Earth

"A vivid narrative that connects the lives of four great astronomers and the scientific discovery that ushered in the modern era. Before the invention of the telescope, people used nothing more than their naked eye to understand what took place in the visible sky. So how did four men in the sixteenth century--of different nationality, age, religion, and class--collaborate to discover that the earth revolved around the sun? With this radical discovery, they created our contemporary world and with it, the uneasy conditions of modern life. Heaven on Earth is an intimate examination of this scientific family--that of Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo Galilei. Author L.S. Fauber brilliantly situates these astronomers in their historic time while juxtaposing their scientific work with insight into their personal lives and political considerations. We often think of individuals who challenge the status quo as lone geniuses but, as Fauber reveals, collaboration was vital for these scientists. They formed a kind of family, related to each other via intellectual pursuit rather than blood. These men called each other "brothers," "fathers," and "sons," and laid the foundations of modern science through familial co-work. And though the sixteenth century was far from the an open society for women, Brahe's sister Sophie, Kepler's mother, Katharina, and Galileo's daughter, Maria Celeste were pioneers in this family in their own right. Filled with rich characters and sweeping historical scope, Heaven on Earth reveals how the strong intergenerational connections between these pillars of intellectual history moved science forward--and how their personalities interacted to give us the heliocentric model of the universe"--