San Antonio College Library

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, and that the earth rotates on its axis every 24 hours--nearly everyone then believed that a perfectly still earth rested in the middle of the cosmos, where all the heavenly bodies revolved around it. A transcendent genius, Copernicus was also a flawed and conflicted person. During...

"Science history at its best is passionate, original, and controversial - a perfect description of the work of Owen Gingerich. Physicist, historian of science, and tireless sleuth, Gingerich is internationally respected for his rigorous scholarship and well-known for his challenging views. His work has had a profound effect on the history of science, disputing prevalent notions of the Copernican revolution, revising interpretations of Kepler's work,...

Publisher's description: In the spring of 1543 as the celebrated astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus, lay on his death bed, his fellow clerics brought him a long-awaited package: the final printed pages of the book he had worked on for many years: De revolutionibus (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres). Though Copernicus would not live to hear of its extraordinary impact, his book, which first suggested that the Sun, not the Earth, was the center...