People
Owen Gingerich
The Book Nobody Read
by Owen Gingerich
Four and a half centuries after the initial 1543 publication of De revolutionibus, Gingerich embarked on an epic quest to see all existing copies of the first and second editions. He was inspired by a seeming contradiction: Arthur Koestler’s claim that nobody had read Copernicus’ book when it was published; and his discovery, in Edinburgh, of a first edition richly annotated in its margins by the leading teacher of astronomy in Europe in the 1540s. If one copy had been so quickly appreciated, Gingerich reasoned, perhaps others were as well—and perhaps they could throw new light on a hinge point in the history of astronomy.
After three decades of investigation, and after traveling hundred of thousands of miles across the globe, Gingerich has written an utterly original book built on his experience and insights gleaned from examining nearly 600 copies of De revolutionibus. He traced the ownership of individual copies through the hands of saints, heretics, scalawags, and bibliomaniacs. He was called as an expert witness in the theft of one copy, attended the dramatic auction of another, and proves conclusively that De revolutionibus was as inspirational as it was revolutionary.
Contact
- Address: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA - Email: ginger@cfa.harvard.edu
- Phone: (617) 495-7216
