The Transit of Venus: The Brief, Brilliant Life of Jeremiah Horrocks, Father of British Astronomy Book

Like Mercator and Longitude, The Transit of Venus is the fascinating story of a man ahead of his time, whose work laid the foundations for modern astronomy.

There is a missing chapter in the history of astronomy. It lies between Galileo and Newton and belongs to a brilliant young Englishman, who, in the period before the English Civil War, was the greatest astronomer in the kingdom. Most people would name Newton and Halley as the greatest British astronomers, but both men drew heavily on the works of Jeremiah Horrocks. Like John Harrison, the clockmaker who solved the problem of longitude, Horrocks was a visionary. Devoted to the study of the stars, he knew the positions and motions of the planets more accurately than any person of the time; he was also the first to appreciate the true scale of the solar system and to chart the wanderings of the moon. On his death, Horrocks had barely come of age, but he had already left a great scientific legacy.