Books about Kepler

  • Baumgardt, Carola, Johannes Kepler: Life and Letters. New York: Philosophical Library, 1951. UCSC S & E Lib QB36 K4 A3.
    Excerpts from Kepler's letters in English, with an Introduction by Albert Einstein.
  • Dijksterhuis, Eduard Jan. The Mechanization of the World Picture. Translated by C. Dikshoorn. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961. UCSC S & E Lib Q125.D512.
    The best analysis of the premodern/modern shift. Thrilling.
  • Ekeland, Ivar, Mathematics and the Unexpected. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. UCSC S & E Lib QA614.58.E34113 1988.
    Transl. by the author of the French original of 1984. The first chapter is a very nice introduction to solar system models: Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, and Poincare.
  • Herz-Fischler, Roger, A Mathematical History of Division in Extreme and Mean Ratio. Waterloo, ONT: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1987.
    Definitive history of the golden section.
  • Katz, Victor J. A history of mathematics : an introduction. New York : HarperCollins, c1993. UCSC S & E Lib QA21.K33 1993
    In addition to masterful treatment of the whole history of mathematics, Katz provides a unique source for the actual math of Kepler's music of the spheres.
  • Koestler, Arthur, The Watershed. Garden City, NY : Anchor Books, 1960. UCSC Lick Obs QB36 K4 K6
    From The Sleepwalkers of 1959. Koestler believed that Kepler was the watershed between ancient and modern, hence the title.
  • Kozhamthadam, Job, The Discovery of Kepler's Laws: The Interaction of Science, Philosophy, and Religion. Notre Dame : Notre Dame Press, 1994. UCSC S & E Lib QB355.3.K69 1994
    A new direction in Keplerian scholarship, in which the bifurcation from premodern to modern mind (ie, the second and first laws) resulted from a sort of chemical reaction between these three paradigms.
  • Livio, Mario, The Golden Ratio: The Story of PHI, the World's Most Astonishing Number. New York: Broadway Books, 2002.
    Just part of this wonderful tale deals with Kepler's contributions in pp. 145-158.
  • Martens, Rhonda, Kepler's Philosophy and the New Astronomy. Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2000. UCSC S & E Lib QB355.3.M37 2000.
    xxxx
  • Moore, Patrick, and Garry Hunt, Atlas of the solar system. Chicago : Rand McNally, 1983. UCSC S & E Lib QB501.2.M66 1983
    Excellent stories on all of the planets, all the numbers you want.
  • Stephenson, Bruce, The Music of the Heavens. Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1994. UCSC S & E Lib QB361.S74 1994
    Harmony of the spheres from antiquity to Book V of Kepler.
  • Szpiro, George C., Kepler's Conjecture: How some of the greatest minds in history helped solve one of the oldest math poblems in the world. New York: John Wiley, 2003.
    This old problem is: how to pack cannonballs in a ship. Kepler posed a solution in 1611.
  • Voelkel, Jams R., The Composition of Kepler's Astronomia Nova. Prineceton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.
    Treats equally the Mysterium Cosmographicum.
    Contains a useful index of Kepler's correspondence.

  • Rev'd 13 apr 2003 by ralph abraham