A Labor of Love: The Renaissance of Astronomy by Noel Swerdlow Has Been Published Posthumously with Help from Friends and Colleagues

Noel Swerdlow, a leading historian of science and expert on Copernicus, spent his later years at Caltech as a visiting associate after retiring from the University of Chicago in 2010. He passed away in 2021, leaving behind an unfinished manuscript tracing the evolution of Renaissance astronomy. The project, which Swerdlow had pursued for years, was revived by his longtime friend and colleague Jed Buchwald, editor of the *Sources and Studies* series, who ensured its completion and publication in May.

The book, *The Renaissance of Astronomy*, offers a detailed examination of the works of Regiomontanus, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo. These astronomers challenged Ptolemy’s geocentric model, replacing it with a heliocentric system centered on the Sun. Swerdlow’s rigorous analysis provides new insights into how their contributions reshaped observational and mathematical astronomy, according to Buchwald.

Completing the manuscript required extensive collaboration. Buchwald worked with Swerdlow’s former student Anthony Grafton, a Princeton historian, to gather missing materials, edit the text, and finalize a chapter on Tycho Brahe. The editing process spanned four and a half years, involving friends and colleagues to compile bibliographies, translations, and supplementary illustrations.

The final work, published by Springer Nature, includes original translations by Swerdlow, such as Regiomontanus’s 15th-century oration, alongside charts, diagrams, and historical horoscopes. Buchwald describes it as a monumental resource for understanding the origins of modern science, comparable to a 19th-century history by Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre. The book is available as an e-book and in two printed volumes.