Few scientists have become the subjects of novels, but the great cosmologists of the 16th and 17th centuries who refashioned the ancient world picture - Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo - have repeatedly captured the imagination of novelists.

Kepler’s laws are numbingly arcane: one, planets move in ellipses with the sun at one focus; two, the line between the sun and a planet sweeps out equal areas in equal times; three, the square of the period of the orbit is proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of the ellipse.

Banville bases ''Kepler'' on the standard biographies of the scientist and, above all, on ''The Sleepwalkers'' by Arthur Koestler, with its portrayal of Kepler as the astronomer skeptical of received tradition, the open-minded thinker hemmed in by closed minds, the genius whose creative work was akin to sleepwalking and whose flashes of insight alternated with periods of blind regression. (Russell McCormmach)

Instead of writing a conventional fictional biography, he presents episodes, varying in length from one day to several years, from Kepler's life. Within these episodes, Mr. Banville vividly evokes details of 17th century society. ( Stephen Curry)

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Created Aug 16, 2016 at 7:07am • Submit your own review...