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Chasing the Masterpiece of Copernicus

March 25, 2004
Owen Gingerich senior astronomer emeritus, Smithsonian

Owen Gingerich one of the world's leading authorities on Galileo and Copernicus, shares his 30-year obsession with the fact that shortly before his death in 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus published De revolutionibu. A groundbreaking scientific work, it revealed that we live in a sun - rather than earth - centered universe. Curious about the contention that the book went largely unread at the time, Gingerich undertook a trek around the world to hunt down the 600-odd extant first and second printings. The result is The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Copernicus - part travelogue, part science detective story, party biography of a book and its illustrious author.

WGBH
Boston Athenaeum
Image of God's Universe
Author: Owen Gingerich
Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2006)
Binding: Hardcover, 160 pages
Image of The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus
Author: Owen Gingerich
Publisher: Walker & Company (2004)
Binding: Hardcover, 306 pages
Image of The Eye of Heaven: Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler (Masters of Modern Physics)
Author: Owen Gingerich
Publisher: Springer (1997)
Binding: Hardcover, 458 pages
Image of Nicolaus Copernicus: Making the Earth a Planet
Author: Owen Gingerich, James MacLachlan
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (2005)
Binding: Hardcover, 128 pages
Image of The Great Copernicus Chase and Other Adventures in Astronomical History
Author: Owen Gingerich
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (1992)
Binding: Hardcover, 316 pages