Category Archives: Book Reviews

Christmas Trilogy 2012 Part III: What to do if your mother’s a witch.

Posted on December 27, 2012 by

Johannes Kepler certainly lived in interesting times in the sense of the old Chinese curse.  Born 27th December 1571 he lived through the most intensive phase of the Counter-Reformation being forced, as a Protestant living and working in Catholic territory, to … Continue reading →

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A tale of a telescope

Posted on August 17, 2012 by

In this month’s Journal for the History of Astronomy I have a book review of Richard Gillespie’s The Great Melbourne Telescope - a book I enjoyed reading and a review I enjoyed writing. Hop over to teleskopos to read it.

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Scientific histories: debates among Victorian historians

Posted on June 6, 2012 by

To see a review of Ian Hesketh’s The Science of History in Victorian Britain: Making the Past Speak, hop over to teleskopos.

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Mapping the history of triangulation

Posted on May 25, 2012 by

Triangulation was for about 400 years until the invention of GPS the only tool available to cartographers to help them produce highly accurate maps. Maps that had hugh political, economic, scientific and military significance in the modern era. Have you … Continue reading →

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How not to write about Renaissance mathematics.

Posted on May 8, 2012 by

This is a book review. It is a review of Mark A. Peterson’s Galileo’s Muse: Renaissance Mathematics and the Arts that I have to admit I’m writing with some reluctance. Why? I’m writing this review with some reluctance because it is going … Continue reading →

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The Swerve is really a full-frontal crash.

Posted on May 1, 2012 by

Today  we have a new guest post from regular commentator and Renaissance Mathematicus fan Baerista. Whereas I am an Englishman living in Germany who blogs in English Baerista is a German living in London who normally blogs in German. Today he has … Continue reading →

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Tartu: “the Russian Empire’s leading observatory”

Posted on March 26, 2012 by

My review of Lea Leppick’s Tartu Old Observatory (2011), appeared in the  February 2012 issue (£) of the Journal for the History of Astronomy. You can read it here.

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The active observatory

Posted on January 24, 2012 by

The following review was written for the new Science Studies section of the website Dissertation Reviews, and can also be read there. It is an outline of Alistair Kwan’s Architectures of astronomical observation: from Sternwarte Kassel (circa 1560) to the Radcliffe … Continue reading →

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An 18th-century astronomical tour

Posted on December 23, 2011 by

In the latest issue of the British Journal for the History of Science I have a review of Kurt Møller Pedersen and Peter de Clercq’s edition of the journal that the Danish astronomer, surveyor and mathematician Thomas Bugge kept of … Continue reading →

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Creative, historical (non-)fiction

Posted on November 11, 2011 by

A post musing on history and history of science in creative non-fiction and fiction, plus a review of the historical, astronomical, romantic novel Variable Stars. [Read more]

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