Kitty Ferguson

As always, the subtitle is only vaguely apt. There is very little about a "partnership" in the sense we're likely to think of it - two men working together to solve a common problem, a la Watson and Crick or Batman and Robin or some such. Instead, we have a pair of overlapping semi-biographies. Tycho Brahe, the senior partner in this firm, gets most of the ink here, and we have only a vague image of Kepler, who is mostly offstage for most of the story. Fortunately, Tycho Brahe's story is show more worth reading, especially in Ferguson's treatment, and her telling of Kepler, while it gives little sense of the man, is good on the way in which his obsessive study clarified the data he received from the great Dane.
The first portion of the book is devoted to Brahe's rise as an astronomer in Denmark, and Ferguson shows nicely how his position as a member of the nobility both hindered and enabled his work as an astronomer, ultimately allowing him to construct the observatory and the instruments he needed to make the best observations available at the time but presenting initial obstacles and throughout his life a series of hurdles which, in the end, he failed to negotiate successfully.
Ferguson's explanations of the astronomical questions are excellent, and the reader gets a good sense of the development of the science, both as a technical art of perfecting instruments and observational techniques and as a means of conceptualizing the universe. This latter sense is the division between Brahe and Kepler, and it is this that makes the relationship between the two dificult to conceive of as a 'partnership'. The two men do not seem to have shared much of their world view, nor did they work together in any meaningful sense. In Ferguson's telling, Brahe brought Kepler into his observatory primarily to keep an eye on him, and to serve as an implement in a turf war with another astronomer. Kepler was never allowed access to the data he needed for his work until after Brahe's death, and even then he had to contend with the Dane's successors to work on the Mars problem which ultimately overthrew the geocentric view Brahe was wedded to.
This problem, however, is only a problem if one reads subtitles: the book itself is excellent, clearly written and well-paced for the intelligent non-astronomer. Students of European history will also find plenty to mull over, as the story is continually marked by the religious strife of the period. show less

I don't remember exactly the day I first learned about black holes, but I do remember always being extremely fascinated with them all throughout my years of schooling. Whenever they popped up in science class, I always found them curious. They were holes...IN THE UNIVERSE! Tears in the fabric of reality, portals to different dimensions, time machines, or maybe just great big holes that destroyed everything that came near it. POOF! Just like that.

Ok, so, yes, perhaps I was a bit misguided, show more but they were incredibly interesting things. The fun part is, even when you break it down into numbers and implement all that exhausting science, they're even more fascinating! Best of all, Kitty Ferguson's book does a great job of simplifying it just enough to make it not so overwhelming, without oversimplifying. And when she does oversimplify, she tells you so. I learned alot from Prisons of Light, without feeling like the author was dumbing down the complex concepts.

The book does go a little downhill during the last quarter or so. The book changes directions, shifting from the more mathematically viable aspects of black holes and focusing more on very sketchy theory and guesswork, as well as some very science-fiction-esque concepts such as worm holes. Theory is inevitable when discussing black holes, but the book was published in 1996. This is the only book I've read on the subject and I had no idea if the theories have been proven false/correct/silly, so the book really begins to show its age at this point.

Still, it's well worth reading at least the beginning. "Simple" isn't the proper word, I suppose, but black holes definitely feel 'a lot less complex' to me now. A great book for a topic-browser who might just be dipping their toes in the crazy universe of astrophysics. show less

I've had this sitting on my shelves since shortly after it was published, in 2012, and with the recent (or recent-ish) news of Dr. Hawking's death, I figured it was time to finally get around to reading it.

This is a biography of Hawking, but the primary focus is on his work, and Ferguson manages a reasonably good layman's account of the science involved. She also gives us a good feel for Hawking as a human being: a brilliant but human guy with a great sense of humor and the ability to rise show more to some incredibly substantial challenges. So if you're interested in reading about Hawking's work and personality, it's definitely worth a look.

There are some things about it that bothered me a little, though. There are aspects of Hawking's personal life it declines to get into, which is something I respect, but in places -- such as the very brief mention of allegations in the early 2000s that Hawking was the victim of domestic abuse -- the writing sort of feels like it's shading from respectfully silent to annoyingly coy.

That's pretty minor, though. More irritating to me was Ferugson's recurring desire to talk about God and religion: Hawking's attitude towards these subjects, the extent to which his scientific formulations leave room for God and religious belief, etc. I suppose some of this is inevitable when you're talking about cosmology and the search for the origin of the universe, but as someone who doesn't believe religion has a place in science, I think she puts way too much emphasis on this subject. She's clearly trying very hard to be objective about it, but I nevertheless get the strong sense that she's projecting her own religious sensibilities onto things a bit too much, and I think she gets entirely too far into the philosophical weeds with it in the last chapter.

Rating: I sort of wanted to rate this one higher, because I don't have a problem recommending it, really, if you want to read about Hawking and his ideas. But the intrusion of the author's religious concerns irritates me just enough that I feel compelled to knock it down half a star. Obviously, that's not going to be an issue for everyone, but this is me rating it, so I'm giving it a 3.5/5. show less

All that is left of him is an equation: a-squared plus b-squared equals c-squared. Every person going through basic geometry hears it. And yet for its ubiquity and almost-infinite proofs, there is very little known of the man who first discovered it in the Western world (there were earlier proofs in Babylon and India). Pythagoras (ca. 570 BCE – ca. 495 BCE) is a man surrounded by mystery. He formed a philosophical cult, but forbade anyone to write anything down, and yet his theorem show more survived. Kitty Ferguson’s The Music of Pythagoras attempts to separate fact from fiction on behalf of this ancient Greek thinker.

The lack of credible, contemporaneous sources make any biography of Pythagoras tricky at best. While his contributions to mathematics are indispensable, it is his philosophy that Ferguson is after. Greek historians and biographers (writing centuries after his death) described the cult of Pythagoras as an odd one. They were strict vegetarians, believed in the transmigration of souls, and that the Earth, Sun, and all other celestial bodies revolved around a Central Fire. Also central to their system was that numbers could explain the true nature of the universe.

Ferguson does her best to compile a good biography but falls at times into the same traps as others, conjecturing when the evidence is scant. After she goes through the life of Pythagoras, she posits an intellectual heritage that extends from his time through to the present day, going from Ptolemy to Kepler to Bertrand Russell. The writing is good but not stellar. On the plus side, you really learn a lot about ancient Greek philosophy. If you want a book about a mathematician that isn’t all about the math, then this one will do just fine. show less