A fascinating biography of the father of trigonometry, the man who convinced Copernicus to publish his ground-breaking work "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres" and then spent his life promoting it. Rheticus (1514-1574) was an inveterate traveler who couldn't stay in one university post for long before disappearing for a year or two to follow some scientific quest. As a young man he journeyed across Europe to meet Copernicus, whose ideas had caught Rheticus' imagination because they suggested a solution to the multitude of irregularities in Ptolemaic astronomy. Because of Rheticus' persistence, heliocentrism eventually became accepted science.

But this book is much more than a simple biography, and the reader learns about the extensive intertwining of medicine, astronomy and astrology; medicine and the beginnings of toxicology (the teaches of Paracelsus); the effects of religion on just about every aspect of science (mining, for instance, was considered blasphemous because it represented digging in the bowels of Mother Earth, the region of the devil); the laborious political, religious and logistical processes involved in publishing; and the stupendous effort of decades of hand-written calculations required to produce trigonometric tables (out to the 10th or 15th decimal!) required to prove Copernicus' theories. And, of course, there is the ever-present bickering and machinations among the (primarily) Protestant schools over minute disagreements in theology which often affected patronage, friendships, and even survival.

Entertaining, informative, and very well-written, with interesting reproductions of various documents and title pages and lengthy notes. ( )

In The First Copernican: Georg Joachim Rheticus and the Rise of the Copernican Revolution (Walker, 2007) Dennis Danielson brings to life the man without whom Copernicanism might never have been presented to the world. Mathematician and astronomer, pupil and teacher, none more than Rheticus can be credited with the 1543 publication of De Revolutionibus, Copernicus' magnum opus and the book which would - eventually - open the eyes of the world.

Danielson skillfully traces the peregrinations of the young Rheticus around central Europe: from his birthplace in Feldkirch to educational institutions in Zurich, Wittenberg, and Nuremberg, and then on to Frauenberg in pursuit of a rumored "new idea" being espoused by amateur astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. Planning to stay a month, Rheticus remained with Copernicus for several years, during which time his teacher wrote the manuscript outlining the new cosmology. When Rheticus left in the fall of 1541, he carried with him the manuscript of De Revolutionibus, which he delivered to printer/publisher Johannes Petreius in Nuremberg for publication.

This biography of Rheticus points out excellently the interconnectedness of mid-sixteenth-century European science (particularly astronomy), tracing various figures back to who taught them, who they were corresponding with, and where they were located. Danielson also does a good job working in the vital religious threads which were at play during the period.

Rheticus' story cannot be told without its more troubling aspects: expelled from his university post and his homeland following charges of sexually abusing a male student, Copernicus' disciple fled to Krakow and other cities, for many years forsaking astronomy and geometry for the practice of medicine. In a bizarre twist, it was another young scholar, Valentin Otto, who persuaded Rheticus late in life to return to his former calling and finish research into a projected work on triangles (published first in 1596 by Otto).

Danielson has done his research well, and its shows in this work. The text (very well designed) is nicely complemented by appropriate illustrations; I found both the footnotes and the index useful (an additional bibliography would have been welcome, however). An excellent biography.

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