Michael Grant (21 November 1914 – 4 October 2004) was an English classicist, numismatist and author of numerous popular books on ancient history. His 1956 translation of Tacitus’s Annals of Imperial Rome remains a standard of the work. He once described himself as "one of the very few freelances in the field of ancient history: a rare phenomenon". As a popularizer, his hallmarks were his prolific output and his unwillingness to oversimplify or talk down to his readership.

Biography

Grant was born in London, the son of Col. Maurice Grant who served in the Boer War and later wrote part of its official history. Young Grant attended Harrow and read classics (1933–37) at Trinity College, Cambridge. His specialty was academic numismatics. His research fellowship thesis later became his first published book — From Imperium to Auctoritas (1946), on Roman bronze coins. Over the next decade he wrote 4 books on Roman coinage; his view was that the tension between the eccentricity of the Roman emperors and the traditionalism of the Roman mint made coins (used as both propaganda and currency) a unique social record.

During World War II, Grant served for a year as an intelligence officer in London after which he was assigned (1940) as the UK's first British Council representative in Turkey. In this capacity he was instrumental in getting his friend, the eminent historian Steven (later Sir Steven) Runciman, his position at Ankara University. While in Turkey, he also married Anne-Sophie Beskow (they eventually produced two sons). At war's end, the couple returned to the UK with Grant’s collection of almost 700 Roman coins (now in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge).

After a brief return to Cambridge, Grant applied for the vacant chair of Humanity (Latin) at Edinburgh University which he held from 1948 until 1959. During a two year (1956–58) leave of absence he also served as vice-chancellor (president) of the University of Khartoum — upon his departure, he turned the university over to the newly independent Sudanese government. He was then vice-chancellor of Queen's University of Belfast (1959–66), after which he pursued a career as a full time writer. According to his obituary in The Times he was "one of the few classical historians to win respect from [both] academics and a lay readership". Immensely prolific, he wrote and edited more than 70 books of nonfiction and translation, covering topics from Roman coinage and the eruption of Mount Vesuvius to the Gospels. He produced general surveys of ancient Greek, Roman and Israelite history as well as biographies of giants such as Julius Caesar, Herod the Great, Cleopatra, Nero, Jesus, St. Peter and St. Paul.

As early as the 1950s, Grant's publishing success was somewhat controversial within the classicist community. According to The Times:

Grant’s approach to classical history was beginning to divide critics. Numismatists felt that his academic work was beyond reproach, but some academics balked at his attempt to condense a survey of Roman literature into 300 pages, and felt (in the words of one reviewer) that “even the most learned and gifted of historians should observe a speed-limit”. The academics would keep cavilling, but the public kept buying.

From 1966 until his death, Grant lived with his wife in Gattaiola, a village near Lucca in Tuscany. His autobiography, My First Eighty Years, appeared in 1994.

Degrees, honors and accolades

Litt.D. (Cambridge)

Hon. Litt. D. (Dublin)

Hon. LL. D. (Queen's University, Belfast)

Honorary Fellow, Royal Numismatic Society

Medallist, Royal Numismatic Society

President, Royal Numismatic Society

Archer M. Huntington Medalist, American Numismatic Society

OBE (1946)

CBE (1958)

Bibliography

Original works

From Imperium to Auctoritas (1946; Rev. ed., 1971)

Aspects of the Principate of Tiberius: Historical Comments on the Colonial Coinage Issued Outside Spain (1950), New York: American Numismatic Society (Series: Numismatic Notes and Monographs, no. 116).

Roman Anniversary Issues: An Exploratory Study of the Numismatic and Medallic Commemoration of Anniversary Years, 49 B.C.-A.D. 375. (1950), Cambridge University Press

Ancient History (1952)

The Six Main Aes Coinages of Augustus (1953), Edinburgh: University Press.

Roman Imperial Money (1954), Thomas Nelson & Sons, Ltd.

Roman History from Coins (1958; Rev ed, 1968)

The World of Rome (1960; Rev. eds., 19??/1974/1987)

The Ancient Mediterranean (1961; Rev. ed., 1969)

Myths of the Greeks and Romans (1962; New biblio: 1986 & 1995) ISBN 0-452-01162-0

Greece and Rome: The Birth of Western Civilization (1964; Rev. ed., 1986)

The Civilizations of Europe (1965)

The Gladiators (1967)

The Climax of Rome: The Final Achievements of the Ancient World, AD 161-337 (1968; Rev. eds., 19??/1974)

Roman History from Coins (1968), Cambridge University Press

Julius Caesar (1969)

The Ancient Historians (1970)

The Roman Forum (1970; Rev. ed., 1974)

Nero (1970)

Herod the Great (1971)

Roman Myths (1971; Rev. eds., 1972/1973)

Cities of Vesuvius: Pompeii and Herculaneum (1971)

Atlas of Classical History (1971; Rev. eds., 1974/1986/1989/1994) [AKA Ancient History Atlas]

Cleopatra (1972; Rev. ed., 1974), Weidenfeld and Nicholson

The Jews in the Roman World (1973; Rev. ed., 1984) [AKA The Jews and the Roman World]

Who's Who in Classical Mythology, with John Hazel (1973; Slightly revised 1993 & 2002)

Caesar (1974), introduction by Elizabeth Longford (Reprint of 1969 book?)

Army of the Caesars (1974)

Cities of Vesuvius: Pompeii and Herculaneum (1974)

The Twelve Caesars (1975)

Erotic Art in Pompeii: The Secret Collection of the National Museum of Naples (1975), London: Octopus Books Ltd; Photos by Antonia Mulas, Collection descriptions by Antonio De Simone and Maria Teresa Merella (Original publication in Italian, 1974)

The Fall of the Roman Empire (1976; Rev. ed., 1990) ISBN 0-02-028560-4

Paul (1976)

Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels (1977)

History of Rome (1978) ISBN 0-02-345610-8 ISBN 978-0-571-11461-0

Greece and Italy in the Classical World (1978; Rev. ed., 19??)

The Art and Life of Pompeii and Herculaneum (1979)

The Etruscans (1980)

Greek and Latin Authors: 800 BC - AD 1000 (1980)

Dawn of the Middle Ages (1981) -- coffee table book

From Alexander to Cleopatra: the Hellenistic World (1982) [AKA The Hellenistic Greeks (1990)]

The History of Ancient Israel (1984)

The Roman Emperors: A Biographical Guide to the Rulers of Imperial Rome 31BC - 476 AD (1985)

A Guide to the Ancient World: A Dictionary of Classical Place Names (1986)

The Rise of the Greeks (1987)

The Classical Greeks (1989)

The Visible Past: Greek and Roman History from Archaeology, 1960-1990 (1990) [AKA The Visible Past: An Archaeological Reinterpretation of Ancient History]

Founders of the Western World: A History of Greece and Rome (1991) [AKA A Short History of Classical Civilization]

Greeks and Romans: A Social History (1992) [ AKA A Social History of Greece and Rome]

The Emperor Constantine (1993) [AKA Constantine the Great: The Man and His Times (1994)]

The Antonines: The Roman Empire in Transition (1994)

St Peter: A Biography (1994)

My First Eighty Years (1994), Autobiography

The Sayings of the Bible (1994), Duckworth Sayings Series

Greek and Roman Historians: Information and Misinformation (1995)

Art in the Roman Empire (1995)

The Severans: The Changed Roman Empire (1996)

From Rome to Byzantium: The Fifth Century (1998)

Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire (1999; Series: Routledge Key Guides)

Sick Caesars (2000)

Translations

Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome (1956; Rev. ed., 1977)

Cicero, Selected Works (1965)

Cicero, Selected Political Speeches (1969)

Cicero, Cicero on the Good Life (1971)

Cicero, Murder Trials (1975)

Cicero, On Government (1993)

Editor/Reviser

Roman Literature (1954; Rev. eds., 1958/1964); Cambridge University Press

Roman Readings (1958; Rev. ed., 1967) [AKA Latin Literature: An Anthology (1979; New biblio: 1989)]

Greek Literature in Translation (1973) [AKA Greek Literature: An Anthology: Translations from Greek Prose and Poetry]

Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars: An Illustrated Edition (1979; Revision of Robert Graves' 1957 translation)

Civilization of the Ancient Mediterranean (with R. Kitzinger, 1988)

Apuleius, The Golden Ass (1990; Revision of Robert Graves' 1950 translation)

Readings in the Classical Historians (1992)

Contributor

"Translating Latin Prose", , Vol. 2, No. 2; April 1971. (Reprinted in Radice William and Barbara Reynolds (1987), The Translater's Art: Essays in Honor of Betty Radice, Harmondsworth: Penguin, pp 81–91.)

Entry, "Julius Caesar" [Review of the 1953 film], In: Carnes, Mark C., ed. (1995), Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies, New York: Henry Holt and Company (Series: A Society of American Historians Book), pp 44–47.

References

Category:1914 births Category:2004 deaths Category:English classical scholars Category:English historians Category:English numismatists Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Category:Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Category:Academics of the University of Edinburgh Category:People associated with Queen's University Belfast

Name	Johannes Kepler
Birth date	December 27, 1571
Birth place	Weil der Stadt near Stuttgart, Germany
Residence	Württemberg; Styria; Bohemia; Upper Austria
Death date	November 15, 1630
Death place	Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany
Field	Astronomy, astrology, mathematics and natural philosophy
Work institutions	University of Linz
Alma mater	University of Tübingen
Advisor	Michael Maestlin
Known for	Kepler's laws of planetary motionKepler conjecture
Religion	Lutheran
Signature	Unterschrift Kepler.svg

Johannes Kepler (; December 27, 1571 – November 15, 1630) was a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer, and key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution. He is best known for his eponymous laws of planetary motion, codified by later astronomers, based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome of Copernican Astronomy. These works also provided one of the foundations for Isaac Newton's theory of universal gravitation.

During his career, Kepler was a mathematics teacher at a seminary school in Graz, Austria where he became an associate of Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg. Later he became an assistant to astronomer Tycho Brahe, the imperial mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II and his two successors Matthias and Ferdinand II. He was also a mathematics teacher in Linz, Austria, and an adviser to General Wallenstein. Additionally, he did fundamental work in the field of optics, invented an improved version of the refracting telescope (the Keplerian Telescope), and mentioned the telescopic discoveries of his contemporary Galileo Galilei.

Kepler lived in an era when there was no clear distinction between astronomy and astrology, but there was a strong division between astronomy (a branch of mathematics within the liberal arts) and physics (a branch of natural philosophy). Kepler also incorporated religious arguments and reasoning into his work, motivated by the religious conviction that God had created the world according to an intelligible plan that is accessible through the natural light of reason. Kepler described his new astronomy as "celestial physics", as "an excursion into Aristotle's Metaphysics", and as "a supplement to Aristotle's On the Heavens", transforming the ancient tradition of physical cosmology by treating astronomy as part of a universal mathematical physics.

Early years

, which Kepler witnessed as a child, attracted the attention of astronomers across Europe.]]

Johannes Kepler was born on December 27, 1571, at the Free Imperial City of Weil der Stadt (now part of the Stuttgart Region in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, 30 km west of Stuttgart's center). His grandfather, Sebald Kepler, had been Lord Mayor of that town but, by the time Johannes was born, he had two brothers and one sister and the Kepler family fortune was in decline. His father, Heinrich Kepler, earned a precarious living as a mercenary, and he left the family when Johannes was five years old. He was believed to have died in the Eighty Years' War in the Netherlands. His mother Katharina Guldenmann, an inn-keeper's daughter, was a healer and herbalist who was later tried for witchcraft. Born prematurely, Johannes claimed to have been a weak and sickly child. He was, however, a brilliant child; he often impressed travelers at his grandfather's inn with his phenomenal mathematical faculty.

He was introduced to astronomy at an early age, and developed a love for it that would span his entire life. At age six, he observed the Great Comet of 1577, writing that he "was taken by [his] mother to a high place to look at it." However, childhood smallpox left him with weak vision and crippled hands, limiting his ability in the observational aspects of astronomy.

In 1589, after moving through grammar school, Latin school, and seminary at Maulbronn, Kepler attended Tübinger Stift at University of Tübingen. There, he studied philosophy under Vitus Müller and theology under Jacob Heerbrand (a student of Philipp Melanchthon at Wittenberg) who also taught Michael Maestlin while he was a student, until he became Chancellor at Tübingen in 1590. He proved himself to be a superb mathematician and earned a reputation as a skillful astrologer, casting horoscopes for fellow students. Under the instruction of Michael Maestlin, Tübingen's professor of mathematics from 1583 to 1631, Despite his desire to become a minister, near the end of his studies Kepler was recommended for a position as teacher of mathematics and astronomy at the Protestant school in Graz, Austria (later the University of Graz). He accepted the position in April 1594, at the age of 23.

Graz (1594–1600)

Mysterium Cosmographicum

model of the Solar system from Mysterium Cosmographicum (1600)]]

Johannes Kepler's first major astronomical work, Mysterium Cosmographicum (The Cosmographic Mystery), was the first published defense of the Copernican system. Kepler claimed to have had an epiphany on July 19, 1595, while teaching in Graz, demonstrating the periodic conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the zodiac; he realized that regular polygons bound one inscribed and one circumscribed circle at definite ratios, which, he reasoned, might be the geometrical basis of the universe. After failing to find a unique arrangement of polygons that fit known astronomical observations (even with extra planets added to the system), Kepler began experimenting with 3-dimensional polyhedra. He found that each of the five Platonic solids could be uniquely inscribed and circumscribed by spherical orbs; nesting these solids, each encased in a sphere, within one another would produce six layers, corresponding to the six known planets—Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. By ordering the solids correctly—octahedron, icosahedron, dodecahedron, tetrahedron, cube—Kepler found that the spheres could be placed at intervals corresponding (within the accuracy limits of available astronomical observations) to the relative sizes of each planet’s path, assuming the planets circle the Sun. Kepler also found a formula relating the size of each planet’s orb to the length of its orbital period: from inner to outer planets, the ratio of increase in orbital period is twice the difference in orb radius. However, Kepler later rejected this formula, because it was not precise enough.

As he indicated in the title, Kepler thought he had revealed God’s geometrical plan for the universe. Much of Kepler’s enthusiasm for the Copernican system stemmed from his theological convictions about the connection between the physical and the spiritual; the universe itself was an image of God, with the Sun corresponding to the Father, the stellar sphere to the Son, and the intervening space between to the Holy Spirit. His first manuscript of Mysterium contained an extensive chapter reconciling heliocentrism with biblical passages that seemed to support geocentrism.

With the support of his mentor Michael Maestlin, Kepler received permission from the Tübingen university senate to publish his manuscript, pending removal of the Bible exegesis and the addition of a simpler, more understandable description of the Copernican system as well as Kepler’s new ideas. Mysterium was published late in 1596, and Kepler received his copies and began sending them to prominent astronomers and patrons early in 1597; it was not widely read, but it established Kepler’s reputation as a highly skilled astronomer. The dedication, to powerful patrons as well as to the men who controlled his position in Graz, also provided a crucial doorway into the patronage system.

Though the details would be modified in light of his later work, Kepler never relinquished the Platonist polyhedral-spherist cosmology of Mysterium Cosmographicum. His subsequent main astronomical works were in some sense only further developments of it, concerned with finding more precise inner and outer dimensions for the spheres by calculating the eccentricities of the planetary orbits within it. In 1621 Kepler published an expanded second edition of Mysterium, half as long again as the first, detailing in footnotes the corrections and improvements he had achieved in the 25 years since its first publication.

Marriage to Barbara Müller

In December 1595, Kepler was introduced to Barbara Müller, a 23-year-old widow (twice over) with a young daughter, Gemma van Dvijneveldt, and he began courting her. Müller, heir to the estates of her late husbands, was also the daughter of a successful mill owner. Her father Jobst initially opposed a marriage despite Kepler's nobility; though he had inherited his grandfather's nobility, Kepler's poverty made him an unacceptable match. Jobst relented after Kepler completed work on Mysterium, but the engagement nearly fell apart while Kepler was away tending to the details of publication. However, church officials—who had helped set up the match—pressured the Müllers to honor their agreement. Barbara and Johannes were married on April 27, 1597.

In the first years of their marriage, the Keplers had two children (Heinrich and Susanna), both of whom died in infancy. In 1602, they had a daughter (Susanna); in 1604, a son (Friedrich); and in 1607, another son (Ludwig).

Other research

Following the publication of Mysterium and with the blessing of the Graz school inspectors, Kepler began an ambitious program to extend and elaborate his work. He planned four additional books: one on the stationary aspects of the universe (the Sun and the fixed stars); one on the planets and their motions; one on the physical nature of planets and the formation of geographical features (focused especially on Earth); and one on the effects of the heavens on the Earth, to include atmospheric optics, meteorology and astrology.

He also sought the opinions of many of the astronomers to whom he had sent Mysterium, among them Reimarus Ursus (Nicolaus Reimers Bär)—the imperial mathematician to Rudolph II and a bitter rival of Tycho Brahe. Ursus did not reply directly, but republished Kepler's flattering letter to pursue his priority dispute over (what is now called) the Tychonic system with Tycho. Despite this black mark, Tycho also began corresponding with Kepler, starting with a harsh but legitimate critique of Kepler's system; among a host of objections, Tycho took issue with the use of inaccurate numerical data taken from Copernicus. Through their letters, Tycho and Kepler discussed a broad range of astronomical problems, dwelling on lunar phenomena and Copernican theory (particularly its theological viability). But without the significantly more accurate data of Tycho's observatory, Kepler had no way to address many of these issues.

Instead, he turned his attention to chronology and "harmony," the numerological relationships among music, mathematics and the physical world, and their astrological consequences. By assuming the Earth to possess a soul (a property he would later invoke to explain how the sun causes the motion of planets), he established a speculative system connecting astrological aspects and astronomical distances to weather and other earthly phenomena. By 1599, however, he again felt his work limited by the inaccuracy of available data—just as growing religious tension was also threatening his continued employment in Graz. In December of that year, Tycho invited Kepler to visit him in Prague; on January 1, 1600 (before he even received the invitation), Kepler set off in the hopes that Tycho's patronage could solve his philosophical problems as well as his social and financial ones.

Prague (1600–1612)

Work for Tycho Brahe

On February 4, 1600, Kepler met Tycho Brahe and his assistants Franz Tengnagel and Longomontanus at Benátky nad Jizerou (35 km from Prague), the site where Tycho's new observatory was being constructed. Over the next two months he stayed as a guest, analyzing some of Tycho's observations of Mars; Tycho guarded his data closely, but was impressed by Kepler's theoretical ideas and soon allowed him more access. Kepler planned to test his theory from Mysterium Cosmographicum based on the Mars data, but he estimated that the work would take up to two years (since he was not allowed to simply copy the data for his own use). With the help of Johannes Jessenius, Kepler attempted to negotiate a more formal employment arrangement with Tycho, but negotiations broke down in an angry argument and Kepler left for Prague on April 6. Kepler and Tycho soon reconciled and eventually reached an agreement on salary and living arrangements, and in June, Kepler returned home to Graz to collect his family.

Political and religious difficulties in Graz dashed his hopes of returning immediately to Tycho; in hopes of continuing his astronomical studies, Kepler sought an appointment as mathematician to Archduke Ferdinand. To that end, Kepler composed an essay—dedicated to Ferdinand—in which he proposed a force-based theory of lunar motion: "In Terra inest virtus, quae Lunam ciet" ("There is a force in the earth which causes the moon to move"). Though the essay did not earn him a place in Ferdinand's court, it did detail a new method for measuring lunar eclipses, which he applied during the July 10 eclipse in Graz. These observations formed the basis of his explorations of the laws of optics that would culminate in Astronomiae Pars Optica.

On August 2, 1600, after refusing to convert to Catholicism, Kepler and his family were banished from Graz. Several months later, Kepler returned, now with the rest of his household, to Prague. Through most of 1601, he was supported directly by Tycho, who assigned him to analyzing planetary observations and writing a tract against Tycho's (by then deceased) rival, Ursus. In September, Tycho secured him a commission as a collaborator on the new project he had proposed to the emperor: the Rudolphine Tables that should replace the Prutenic Tables of Erasmus Reinhold. Two days after Tycho's unexpected death on October 24, 1601, Kepler was appointed his successor as imperial mathematician with the responsibility to complete his unfinished work. The next 11 years as imperial mathematician would be the most productive of his life.

Advisor to Emperor Rudolph II

Kepler's primary obligation as imperial mathematician was to provide astrological advice to the emperor. Though Kepler took a dim view of the attempts of contemporary astrologers to precisely predict the future or divine specific events, he had been casting detailed horoscopes for friends, family and patrons since his time as a student in Tübingen. In addition to horoscopes for allies and foreign leaders, the emperor sought Kepler's advice in times of political trouble (though Kepler's recommendations were based more on common sense than the stars). Rudolph was actively interested in the work of many of his court scholars (including numerous alchemists) and kept up with Kepler's work in physical astronomy as well.

Officially, the only acceptable religious doctrines in Prague were Catholic and Utraquist, but Kepler's position in the imperial court allowed him to practice his Lutheran faith unhindered. The emperor nominally provided an ample income for his family, but the difficulties of the over-extended imperial treasury meant that actually getting hold of enough money to meet financial obligations was a continual struggle. Partly because of financial troubles, his life at home with Barbara was unpleasant, marred with bickering and bouts of sickness. Court life, however, brought Kepler into contact with other prominent scholars (Johannes Matthäus Wackher von Wackhenfels, Jost Bürgi, David Fabricius, Martin Bachazek, and Johannes Brengger, among others) and astronomical work proceeded rapidly.

Astronomiae Pars Optica

As he slowly continued analyzing Tycho's Mars observations—now available to him in their entirety—and began the slow process of tabulating the Rudolphine Tables, Kepler also picked up the investigation of the laws of optics from his lunar essay of 1600. Both lunar and solar eclipses presented unexplained phenomena, such as unexpected shadow sizes, the red color of a total lunar eclipse, and the reportedly unusual light surrounding a total solar eclipse. Related issues of atmospheric refraction applied to all astronomical observations. Through most of 1603, Kepler paused his other work to focus on optical theory; the resulting manuscript, presented to the emperor on January 1, 1604, was published as Astronomiae Pars Optica (The Optical Part of Astronomy). In it, Kepler described the inverse-square law governing the intensity of light, reflection by flat and curved mirrors, and principles of pinhole cameras, as well as the astronomical implications of optics such as parallax and the apparent sizes of heavenly bodies. He also extended his study of optics to the human eye, and is generally considered by neuroscientists to be the first to recognize that images are projected inverted and reversed by the eye's lens onto the retina. The solution to this dilemma was not of particular importance to Kepler as he did not see it as pertaining to optics, although he did suggest that the image was later corrected "in the hollows of the brain" due to the "activity of the Soul." Today, Astronomiae Pars Optica is generally recognized as the foundation of modern optics (though the law of refraction is conspicuously absent).

The Supernova of 1604

In October 1604, a bright new evening star (SN 1604) appeared, but Kepler did not believe the rumors until he saw it himself. Kepler began systematically observing the star. Astrologically, the end of 1603 marked the beginning of a fiery trigon, the start of the ca. 800-year cycle of great conjunctions; astrologers associated the two previous such periods with the rise of Charlemagne (ca. 800 years earlier) and the birth of Christ (ca. 1600 years earlier), and thus expected events of great portent, especially regarding the emperor. It was in this context, as the imperial mathematician and astrologer to the emperor, that Kepler described the new star two years later in his De Stella Nova. In it, Kepler addressed the star's astronomical properties while taking a skeptical approach to the many astrological interpretations then circulating. He noted its fading luminosity, speculated about its origin, and used the lack of observed parallax to argue that it was in the sphere of fixed stars, further undermining the doctrine of the immutability of the heavens (the idea accepted since Aristotle that the celestial spheres were perfect and unchanging). The birth of a new star implied the variability of the heavens. In an appendix, Kepler also discussed the recent chronology work of the Polish historian Laurentius Suslyga; he calculated that, if Suslyga was correct that accepted timelines were four years behind, then the Star of Bethlehem—analogous to the present new star—would have coincided with the first great conjunction of the earlier 800-year cycle. , is marked with an N (8 grid squares down, 4 over from the left).]]

Astronomia nova

The extended line of research that culminated in Astronomia nova (A New Astronomy)—including the first two laws of planetary motion—began with the analysis, under Tycho's direction, of Mars' orbit. Kepler calculated and recalculated various approximations of Mars' orbit using an equant (the mathematical tool that Copernicus had eliminated with his system), eventually creating a model that generally agreed with Tycho's observations to within two arcminutes (the average measurement error). But he was not satisfied with the complex and still slightly inaccurate result; at certain points the model differed from the data by up to eight arcminutes. The wide array of traditional mathematical astronomy methods having failed him, Kepler set about trying to fit an ovoid orbit to the data.

Within Kepler's religious view of the cosmos, the Sun (a symbol of God the Father) was the source of motive force in the solar system. As a physical basis, Kepler drew by analogy on William Gilbert's theory of the magnetic soul of the Earth from De Magnete (1600) and on his own work on optics. Kepler supposed that the motive power (or motive species) radiated by the Sun weakens with distance, causing faster or slower motion as planets move closer or farther from it. Perhaps this assumption entailed a mathematical relationship that would restore astronomical order. Based on measurements of the aphelion and perihelion of the Earth and Mars, he created a formula in which a planet's rate of motion is inversely proportional to its distance from the Sun. Verifying this relationship throughout the orbital cycle, however, required very extensive calculation; to simplify this task, by late 1602 Kepler reformulated the proportion in terms of geometry: planets sweep out equal areas in equal times—Kepler's second law of planetary motion.

trajectory of Mars through several periods of apparent retrograde motion. Astronomia nova, Chapter 1, (1609).]]

He then set about calculating the entire orbit of Mars, using the geometrical rate law and assuming an egg-shaped ovoid orbit. After approximately 40 failed attempts, in early 1605 he at last hit upon the idea of an ellipse, which he had previously assumed to be too simple a solution for earlier astronomers to have overlooked. Finding that an elliptical orbit fit the Mars data, he immediately concluded that all planets move in ellipses, with the sun at one focus—Kepler's first law of planetary motion. Because he employed no calculating assistants, however, he did not extend the mathematical analysis beyond Mars. By the end of the year, he completed the manuscript for Astronomia nova, though it would not be published until 1609 due to legal disputes over the use of Tycho's observations, the property of his heirs.

Dioptrice, Somnium manuscript and other work

In the years following the completion of Astronomia Nova, most of Kepler's research was focused on preparations for the Rudolphine Tables and a comprehensive set of ephemerides (specific predictions of planet and star positions) based on the table (though neither would be completed for many years). He also attempted (unsuccessfully) to begin a collaboration with Italian astronomer Giovanni Antonio Magini. Some of his other work dealt with chronology, especially the dating of events in the life of Jesus, and with astrology, especially criticism of dramatic predictions of catastrophe such as those of Helisaeus Roeslin.

Kepler and Roeslin engaged in series of published attacks and counter-attacks, while physician Philip Feselius published a work dismissing astrology altogether (and Roeslin's work in particular). In response to what Kepler saw as the excesses of astrology on the one hand and overzealous rejection of it on the other, Kepler prepared Tertius Interveniens (Third-party Interventions). Nominally this work—presented to the common patron of Roeslin and Feselius—was a neutral mediation between the feuding scholars, but it also set out Kepler's general views on the value of astrology, including some hypothesized mechanisms of interaction between planets and individual souls. While Kepler considered most traditional rules and methods of astrology to be the "evil-smelling dung" in which "an industrious hen" scrapes, there was "also perhaps a good little grain" to be found by the conscientious scientific astrologer.

 – house where Johannes Kepler lived. Museum]]

In the first months of 1610, Galileo Galilei—using his powerful new telescope—discovered four satellites orbiting Jupiter. Upon publishing his account as Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger), Galileo sought the opinion of Kepler, in part to bolster the credibility of his observations. Kepler responded enthusiastically with a short published reply, Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo (Conversation with the Starry Messenger). He endorsed Galileo's observations and offered a range of speculations about the meaning and implications of Galileo's discoveries and telescopic methods, for astronomy and optics as well as cosmology and astrology. Later that year, Kepler published his own telescopic observations of the moons in Narratio de Jovis Satellitibus, providing further support of Galileo. To Kepler's disappointment, however, Galileo never published his reactions (if any) to Astronomia Nova.

After hearing of Galileo's telescopic discoveries, Kepler also started a theoretical and experimental investigation of telescopic optics using a telescope borrowed from Duke Ernest of Cologne. The resulting manuscript was completed in September of 1610 and published as Dioptrice in 1611. In it, Kepler set out the theoretical basis of double-convex converging lenses and double-concave diverging lenses—and how they are combined to produce a Galilean telescope—as well as the concepts of real vs. virtual images, upright vs. inverted images, and the effects of focal length on magnification and reduction. He also described an improved telescope—now known as the astronomical or Keplerian telescope—in which two convex lenses can produce higher magnification than Galileo's combination of convex and concave lenses.

Around 1611, Kepler circulated a manuscript of what would eventually be published (posthumously) as Somnium (The Dream). Part of the purpose of Somnium was to describe what practicing astronomy would be like from the perspective of another planet, to show the feasibility of a non-geocentric system. The manuscript, which disappeared after changing hands several times, described a fantastic trip to the moon; it was part allegory, part autobiography, and part treatise on interplanetary travel (and is sometimes described as the first work of science fiction). Years later, a distorted version of the story may have instigated the witchcraft trial against his mother, as the mother of the narrator consults a demon to learn the means of space travel. Following her eventual acquittal, Kepler composed 223 footnotes to the story—several times longer than the actual text—which explained the allegorical aspects as well as the considerable scientific content (particularly regarding lunar geography) hidden within the text.

As a New Year's gift that year, he also composed for his friend and some-time patron Baron Wackher von Wackhenfels a short pamphlet entitled Strena Seu de Nive Sexangula (A New Year's Gift of Hexagonal Snow). In this treatise, he published the first description of the hexagonal symmetry of snowflakes and, extending the discussion into a hypothetical atomistic physical basis for the symmetry and posed what later became known as the Kepler conjecture, a statement about the most efficient arrangement for packing spheres.

Personal and political troubles

In 1611, the growing political-religious tension in Prague came to a head. Emperor Rudolph—whose health was failing—was forced to abdicate as King of Bohemia by his brother Matthias. Both sides sought Kepler's astrological advice, an opportunity he used to deliver conciliatory political advice (with little reference to the stars, except in general statements to discourage drastic action). However, it was clear that Kepler's future prospects in the court of Matthias were dim.

Also in that year, Barbara Kepler contracted Hungarian spotted fever, then began having seizures. As Barbara was recovering, Kepler's three children all fell sick with smallpox; Friedrich, 6, died. Following his son's death, Kepler sent letters to potential patrons in Württemberg and Padua. At the University of Tübingen in Württemberg, concerns over Kepler's perceived Calvinist heresies in violation of the Augsburg Confession and the Formula of Concord prevented his return. The University of Padua—on the recommendation of the departing Galileo—sought Kepler to fill the mathematics professorship, but Kepler, preferring to keep his family in German territory, instead travelled to Austria to arrange a position as teacher and district mathematician in Linz. However, Barbara relapsed into illness and died shortly after Kepler's return.

Kepler postponed the move to Linz and remained in Prague until Rudolph's death in early 1612, though between political upheaval, religious tension, and family tragedy (along with the legal dispute over his wife's estate), Kepler could do no research. Instead, he pieced together a chronology manuscript, Eclogae Chronicae, from correspondence and earlier work. Upon succession as Holy Roman Emperor, Matthias re-affirmed Kepler's position (and salary) as imperial mathematician but allowed him to move to Linz.

Linz and elsewhere (1612–1630)

In Linz, Kepler's primary responsibilities (beyond completing the Rudolphine Tables) were teaching at the district school and providing astrological and astronomical services. In his first years there, he enjoyed financial security and religious freedom relative to his life in Prague—though he was excluded from Eucharist by his Lutheran church over his theological scruples. His first publication in Linz was De vero Anno (1613), an expanded treatise on the year of Christ's birth; he also participated in deliberations on whether to introduce Pope Gregory's reformed calendar to Protestant German lands; that year he also wrote the influential mathematical treatise Nova stereometria doliorum vinariorum, on measuring the volume of containers such as wine barrels (though it would not be published until 1615).

Second marriage

On October 30, 1613, Kepler married the 24-year-old Susanna Reuttinger. Following the death of his first wife Barbara, Kepler had considered 11 different matches. He eventually returned to Reuttinger (the fifth match) who, he wrote, "won me over with love, humble loyalty, economy of household, diligence, and the love she gave the stepchildren." The first three children of this marriage (Margareta Regina, Katharina, and Sebald) died in childhood. Three more survived into adulthood: Cordula (b. 1621); Fridmar (b. 1623); and Hildebert (b. 1625). According to Kepler's biographers, this was a much happier marriage than his first.

Epitome of Copernican Astronomy, calendars and the witch trial of his mother

Since completing the Astronomia nova, Kepler had intended to compose an astronomy textbook. In 1615, he completed the first of three volumes of Epitome astronomia Copernicanae (Epitome of Copernican Astronomy); the first volume (books I-III) was printed in 1617, the second (book IV) in 1620, and the third (books V-VII) in 1621. Despite the title, which referred simply to heliocentrism, Kepler's textbook culminated in his own ellipse-based system. The Epitome became Kepler's most influential work. It contained all three laws of planetary motion and attempted to explain heavenly motions through physical causes. Though it explicitly extended the first two laws of planetary motion (applied to Mars in Astronomia nova) to all the planets as well as the Moon and the Medicean satellites of Jupiter, it did not explain how elliptical orbits could be derived from observational data.

As a spin-off from the Rudolphine Tables and the related Ephemerides, Kepler published astrological calendars, which were very popular and helped offset the costs of producing his other work—especially when support from the Imperial treasury was withheld. In his calendars—six between 1617 and 1624—Kepler forecast planetary positions and weather as well as political events; the latter were often cannily accurate, thanks to his keen grasp of contemporary political and theological tensions. By 1624, however, the escalation of those tensions and the ambiguity of the prophecies meant political trouble for Kepler himself; his final calendar was publicly burned in Graz.

(1619)]]

In 1615, Ursula Reingold, a woman in a financial dispute with Kepler's brother Cristoph, claimed Kepler's mother Katharina had made her sick with an evil brew. The dispute escalated, and in 1617, Katharina was accused of witchcraft; witchcraft trials were relatively common in central Europe at this time. Beginning in August 1620 she was imprisoned for fourteen months. She was released in October 1621, thanks in part to the extensive legal defense drawn up by Kepler. The accusers had no stronger evidence than rumors, along with a distorted, second-hand version of Kepler's Somnium, in which a woman mixes potions and enlists the aid of a demon. Katharina was subjected to territio verbalis, a graphic description of the torture awaiting her as a witch, in a final attempt to make her confess. Throughout the trial, Kepler postponed his other work to focus on his "harmonic theory". The result, published in 1619, was Harmonices Mundi ("Harmony of the Worlds").

Harmonices Mundi

Kepler was convinced "that the geometrical things have provided the Creator with the model for decorating the whole world." In Harmony, he attempted to explain the proportions of the natural world—particularly the astronomical and astrological aspects—in terms of music. The central set of "harmonies" was the musica universalis or "music of the spheres," which had been studied by Pythagoras, Ptolemy and many others before Kepler; in fact, soon after publishing Harmonices Mundi, Kepler was embroiled in a priority dispute with Robert Fludd, who had recently published his own harmonic theory.

Kepler began by exploring regular polygons and regular solids, including the figures that would come to be known as Kepler's solids. From there, he extended his harmonic analysis to music, meteorology and astrology; harmony resulted from the tones made by the souls of heavenly bodies—and in the case of astrology, the interaction between those tones and human souls. In the final portion of the work (Book V), Kepler dealt with planetary motions, especially relationships between orbital velocity and orbital distance from the Sun. Similar relationships had been used by other astronomers, but Kepler—with Tycho's data and his own astronomical theories—treated them much more precisely and attached new physical significance to them.

Among many other harmonies, Kepler articulated what came to be known as the third law of planetary motion. He then tried many combinations until he discovered that (approximately) "The square of the periodic times are to each other as the cubes of the mean distances." However, the wider significance for planetary dynamics of this purely kinematical law was not realized until the 1660s. For when conjoined with Christian Huygens' newly discovered law of centrifugal force it enabled Isaac Newton, Edmund Halley and perhaps Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke to demonstrate independently that the presumed gravitational attraction between the Sun and its planets decreased with the square of the distance between them. This refuted the traditional assumption of scholastic physics that the power of gravitational attraction remained constant with distance whenever it applied between two bodies, such as was assumed by Kepler and also by Galileo in his mistaken universal law that gravitational fall is uniformly accelerated, and also by Galileo's student Borrelli in his 1666 celestial mechanics.

Rudolphine Tables and his last years

for General Wallenstein]]

In 1623, Kepler at last completed the Rudolphine Tables, which at the time was considered his major work. However, due to the publishing requirements of the emperor and negotiations with Tycho Brahe's heir, it would not be printed until 1627. In the meantime religious tension—the root of the ongoing Thirty Years' War—once again put Kepler and his family in jeopardy. In 1625, agents of the Catholic Counter-Reformation placed most of Kepler's library under seal, and in 1626 the city of Linz was besieged. Kepler moved to Ulm, where he arranged for the printing of the Tables at his own expense.

In 1628, following the military successes of the Emperor Ferdinand's armies under General Wallenstein, Kepler became an official advisor to Wallenstein. Though not the general's court astrologer per se, Kepler provided astronomical calculations for Wallenstein's astrologers and occasionally wrote horoscopes himself. In his final years, Kepler spent much of his time traveling, from the imperial court in Prague to Linz and Ulm to a temporary home in Sagan, and finally to Regensburg. Soon after arriving in Regensburg, Kepler fell ill. He died on November 15, 1630, and was buried there; his burial site was lost after the Swedish army destroyed the churchyard. Only Kepler's self-authored poetic epitaph survived the times:

:Mensus eram coelos, nunc terrae metior umbras :Mens coelestis erat, corporis umbra iacet.

:I measured the skies, now the shadows I measure :Skybound was the mind, earthbound the body rests.

Reception of his astronomy

Kepler's laws were not immediately accepted. Several major figures such as Galileo and René Descartes completely ignored Kepler's Astronomia nova. Many astronomers, including Kepler's teacher, Michael Maestlin, objected to Kepler's introduction of physics into his astronomy. Some adopted compromise positions. Ismael Boulliau accepted elliptical orbits but replaced Kepler's area law with uniform motion in respect to the empty focus of the ellipse while Seth Ward used an elliptical orbit with motions defined by an equant.

Several astronomers tested Kepler's theory, and its various modifications, against astronomical observations. Two transits of Venus and Mercury across the face of the sun provided sensitive tests of the theory, under circumstances when these planets could not normally be observed. In the case of the transit of Mercury in 1631, Kepler had been extremely uncertain of the parameters for Mercury, and advised observers to look for the transit the day before and after the predicted date. Pierre Gassendi observed the transit on the date predicted, a confirmation of Kepler's prediction. This was the first observation of a transit of Mercury. However, his attempt to observe the transit of Venus just one month later, was unsuccessful due to inaccuracies in the Rudolphine Tables. Gassendi did not realize that it was not visible from most of Europe, including Paris. Jeremiah Horrocks, who observed the 1639 Venus transit, had used his own observations to adjust the parameters of the Keplerian model, predicted the transit, and then built apparatus to observe the transit. He remained a firm advocate of the Keplerian model.

Epitome of Copernican Astronomy was read by astronomers throughout Europe, and following Kepler's death it was the main vehicle for spreading Kepler's ideas. Between 1630 and 1650, it was the most widely used astronomy textbook, winning many converts to ellipse-based astronomy.

Historical and cultural legacy

, Czech Republic]] stamp featuring Johannes Kepler]]

Beyond his role in the historical development of astronomy and natural philosophy, Kepler has loomed large in the philosophy and historiography of science. Kepler and his laws of motion were central to early histories of astronomy such as Jean Etienne Montucla’s 1758 Histoire des mathématiques and Jean-Baptiste Delambre's 1821 Histoire de l’astronomie moderne. These and other histories written from an Enlightenment perspective treated Kepler's metaphysical and religious arguments with skepticism and disapproval, but later Romantic-era natural philosophers viewed these elements as central to his success. William Whewell, in his influential History of the Inductive Sciences of 1837, found Kepler to be the archetype of the inductive scientific genius; in his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences of 1840, Whewell held Kepler up as the embodiment of the most advanced forms of scientific method. Similarly, Ernst Friedrich Apelt—the first to extensively study Kepler's manuscripts, after their purchase by Catherine the Great—identified Kepler as a key to the "Revolution of the sciences". Apelt, who saw Kepler's mathematics, aesthetic sensibility, physical ideas, and theology as part of a unified system of thought, produced the first extended analysis of Kepler's life and work.

Modern translations of a number of Kepler's books appeared in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the systematic publication of his collected works began in 1937 (and is nearing completion in the early 21st century), and Max Caspar's seminal Kepler biography was published in 1948. However, Alexandre Koyré's work on Kepler was, after Apelt, the first major milestone in historical interpretations of Kepler's cosmology and its influence. In the 1930s and 1940s Koyré, and a number of others in the first generation of professional historians of science, described the "Scientific Revolution" as the central event in the history of science, and Kepler as a (perhaps the) central figure in the revolution. Koyré placed Kepler's theorization, rather than his empirical work, at the center of the intellectual transformation from ancient to modern world-views. Since the 1960s, the volume of historical Kepler scholarship has expanded greatly, including studies of his astrology and meteorology, his geometrical methods, the role of his religious views in his work, his literary and rhetorical methods, his interaction with the broader cultural and philosophical currents of his time, and even his role as an historian of science.

The debate over Kepler's place in the Scientific Revolution has also produced a wide variety of philosophical and popular treatments. One of the most influential is Arthur Koestler's 1959 The Sleepwalkers, in which Kepler is unambiguously the hero (morally and theologically as well as intellectually) of the revolution. Influential philosophers of science—such as Charles Sanders Peirce, Norwood Russell Hanson, Stephen Toulmin, and Karl Popper—have repeatedly turned to Kepler: examples of incommensurability, analogical reasoning, falsification, and many other philosophical concepts have been found in Kepler's work. Physicist Wolfgang Pauli even used Kepler's priority dispute with Robert Fludd to explore the implications of analytical psychology on scientific investigation. A well-received, if fanciful, historical novel by John Banville, Kepler (1981), explored many of the themes developed in Koestler's non-fiction narrative and in the philosophy of science. Somewhat more fanciful is a recent work of nonfiction, Heavenly Intrigue (2004), suggesting that Kepler murdered Tycho Brahe to gain access to his data. Kepler has acquired a popular image as an icon of scientific modernity and a man before his time; science popularizer Carl Sagan described him as "the first astrophysicist and the last scientific astrologer."

In Austria, Johannes Kepler left behind such a historical legacy that he was one of the motifs of a silver collector's coin: the 10-euro Johannes Kepler silver coin, minted on September 10, 2002. The reverse side of the coin has a portrait of Kepler, who spent some time teaching in Graz and the surrounding areas. Kepler was acquainted with Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg personally, and he probably influenced the construction of Eggenberg Castle (the motif of the obverse of the coin). In front of him on the coin is the model of nested spheres and polyhedra from Mysterium Cosmographicum.

In 2009, NASA named the Kepler Mission for Kepler's contributions to the field of astronomy.

In New Zealand's Fiordland National Park there is also a range of Mountains Named after Kepler, called the Kepler Mountains and a Three Day Walking Trail known as the Kepler Track through the Mountains of the same name.

Veneration

Kepler is honored together with Nicolaus Copernicus with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on May 23.

Works

Mysterium cosmographicum (The Sacred Mystery of the Cosmos) (1596)

De Fundamentis Astrologiae Certioribus (Concerning the More Certain Fundamentals of Astrology) (1601)

Astronomiae Pars Optica (The Optical Part of Astronomy) (1604)

De Stella nova in pede Serpentarii (On the New Star in Ophiuchus's Foot) (1604)

Astronomia nova (New Astronomy) (1609)

Tertius Interveniens (Third-party Interventions) (1610)

Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo (Conversation with the Starry Messenger) (1610)

Dioptrice (1611)

De nive sexangula (On the Six-Cornered Snowflake) (1611)

De vero Anno, quo aeternus Dei Filius humanam naturam in Utero benedictae Virginis Mariae assumpsit (1613)

Eclogae Chronicae (1615, published with Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo)

Nova stereometria doliorum vinariorum (New Stereometry of Wine Barrels) (1615)

Epitome astronomiae Copernicanae (Epitome of Copernican Astronomy) (published in three parts from 1618–1621)

Harmonice Mundi (Harmony of the Worlds) (1619)

Mysterium cosmographicum (The Sacred Mystery of the Cosmos) 2nd Edition (1621)

Tabulae Rudolphinae (Rudolphine Tables) (1627)

Somnium (The Dream) (1634)

See also

Named in his honor

Kepler's laws of planetary motion for astronomical calculations

The Kepler Mission, a space photometer designed to search for Earth-like planets launched by NASA on March 6, 2009

The Johannes Kepler ATV the second European ATV to resupply the ISS. Due to launch in July 2010.

The Kepler Solids, a set of geometrical constructions, two of which were described by him

Kepler's Star, Supernova 1604, which he observed and described

Kepler, a crater on the moon

Kepler, a crater on Mars

1134 Kepler, an asteroid

Kepler, an opera by Philip Glass

Die Harmonie der Welt, an opera by Paul Hindemith

Johannes Kepler University Linz: In 1975, nine years after its founding, the College for Social and Economic Sciences Linz (Austria) was renamed Johannes Kepler University Linz in honor of Johannes Kepler, since he wrote his magnum opus Harmonice Mundi in Linz.

Kepler College, Seattle, Washington

Numerous schools, streets, observatories and others named after him, e.g.:

* Kepler Gymnasium (high school), Tübingen

* Keplerstraße in Hanau near Frankfurt am Main

* Keplerstraße in Munich, Germany

* Keplerstraße and Keplerbrücke in Graz, Austria

* Keplerplatz, a station on the U1 line of the Vienna U-Bahn rapid transit (Metro) system

* Johannes Kepler Grammar School, at the site where Kepler lived in Prague

Kepler Launch Site

Notes and references

The most complete biography of Kepler is Max Caspar's Kepler. Though there are a number of more recent biographies, most are based on Caspar's work with minimal original research; much of the information cited from Caspar can also be found in the books by Arthur Koestler, Kitty Ferguson, and James A. Connor. Owen Gingerich's The Eye of Heaven builds on Caspar's work to place Kepler in the broader intellectual context of early-modern astronomy. Many later studies have focused on particular elements of his life and work. Kepler's mathematics, cosmological, philosophical and historical views have been extensively analyzed in books and journal articles, though his astrological work—and its relationship to his astronomy—remains understudied.

==Sources== : Andersen, Hanne; Peter Barker; and Xiang Chen: The Cognitive Structure of Scientific Revolutions, chapter 6: "The Copernican Revolution." New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006 ISBN 0521855756 : Armitage, Angus: John Kepler, Faber, 1966 : Banville, John: Kepler, Martin, Secker and Warburg, London, 1981 (fictionalised biography) : Barker, Peter and Bernard R. Goldstein: "Theological Foundations of Kepler's Astronomy". Osiris, Volume 16: Science in Theistic Contexts. University of Chicago Press, 2001, pp 88–113 : Caspar, Max: Kepler; transl. and ed. by C. Doris Hellman; with a new introduction and references by Owen Gingerich; bibliographic citations by Owen Gingerich and Alain Segonds. New York: Dover, 1993 ISBN 0486676056 : Connor, James A.: Kepler's Witch: An Astronomer's Discovery of Cosmic Order Amid Religious War, Political Intrigue, and the Heresy Trial of His Mother. HarperSanFrancisco, 2004 ISBN 0060522550 : De Gandt, Francois: Force and Geometry in Newton's Principia, Translated by Curtis Wilson, Princeton University Press 1995 ISBN 0691033676 : Dreyer, J. L. E.: A History of Astronomy from Thales to Kepler. Dover Publications Inc, 1967 ISBN 0486600793 : Ferguson, Kitty: The nobleman and his housedog: Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler: the strange partnership that revolutionized science. London: Review, 2002 ISBN 0747270228 - published in the US as: Tycho & Kepler: the unlikely partnership that forever changed our understanding of the heavens. New York: Walker, 2002 ISBN 0802713904 : Field, J. V.: Kepler's geometrical cosmology. Chicago University Press, 1988 ISBN 0226248232 : Gilder, Joshua and Anne-Lee Gilder: Heavenly Intrigue: Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and the Murder Behind One of History's Greatest Scientific Discoveries, Doubleday (May 18, 2004), ISBN 0385508441 Reviews : Gingerich, Owen: The Eye of Heaven: Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler. American Institute of Physics, 1993 ISBN 0883188635 (Masters of modern physics; v. 7) : Gingerich, Owen: "Kepler, Johannes" in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Volume VII. Charles Coulston Gillispie, editor. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973 : Jardine, Nick: "Koyré’s Kepler/Kepler's Koyré," History of Science, Vol. 38 (2000), pp 363–376 : Kepler, Johannes: Johannes Kepler New Astronomy trans. W. Donahue, forward by O. Gingerich, Cambridge University Press 1993 ISBN 0521301319 : Kepler, Johannes and Christian Frisch: Joannis Kepleri Astronomi Opera Omnia (John Kepler, Astronomer; Complete Works), 8 vols.(1858–1871). vol. 1, 1858, vol. 2, 1859, vol. 3,1860, vol. 6, 1866, vol. 7, 1868, Francofurti a.M. et Erlangae, Heyder & Zimmer, - Google Books : Kepler, Johannes, et al.: Great Books of the Western World. Volume 16: Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler , Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1952. (Contains English translations by of Kepler's Epitome, Books IV & V and Harmonices Book 5.) : Koestler, Arthur: The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe. (1959). ISBN 0140192468 : Koyré, Alexandre: Galilean Studies Harvester Press 1977 ISBN 0855273542 : Koyré, Alexandre: The Astronomical Revolution: Copernicus-Kepler-Borelli Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973 ISBN 0801405041; Methuen, 1973 ISBN 0416769802; Hermann, 1973 ISBN 2705656480 : Kuhn, Thomas S.: The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957. ISBN 0674171039 : Lindberg, David C.: "The Genesis of Kepler's Theory of Light: Light Metaphysics from Plotinus to Kepler." Osiris, N.S. 2. University of Chicago Press, 1986, pp 5–42. : Lear, John: Kepler's Dream. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965 : North, John: The Fontana History of Astronomy and Cosmology, Fontana Press, 1994. ISBN 0006861776 : Pannekoek, Anton: A History of Astronomy, Dover Publications Inc 1989. ISBN 0486659941 : Pauli, Wolfgang: Wolfgang Pauli — Writings on physics and philosophy, translated by Robert Schlapp and edited by P. Enz and Karl von Meyenn (Springer Verlag, Berlin, 1994). See section 21, The influence of archetypical ideas on the scientific theories of Kepler, concerning Johannes Kepler and Robert Fludd (1574–1637). ISBN 354056859X : Schneer, Cecil: "Kepler's New Year's Gift of a Snowflake." Isis, Volume 51, No. 4. University of Chicago Press, 1960, pp 531–545. : Shapin, Steven: The Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. ISBN 0226750205 : Stephenson, Bruce: Kepler's physical astronomy. New York: Springer, 1987 ISBN 0-387-96541-6 (Studies in the history of mathematics and physical sciences; 13); reprinted Princeton:Princeton Univ. Pr., 1994 ISBN 0691036527 : Stephenson, Bruce: The Music of the Heavens: Kepler's Harmonic Astronomy, Princeton University Press, 1994. ISBN 0691034397 : Toulmin, Stephen and June Goodfield: The Fabric of the Heavens: The Development of Astronomy and Dynamics. Pelican, 1963. : Voelkel, James R.: The Composition of Kepler's Astronomia nova, Princeton University Press, 2001. ISBN 0691007381 : Westfall, Richard S.: The Construction of Modern Science: Mechanism and Mechanics. John Wiley and Sons, 1971. ISBN 047193531X; reprinted Cambridge University Press, 1978. ISBN 0521292956 : Westfall, Richard S.: Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton. Cambridge University Press, 1981. ISBN 0521231434 : Wolf, A.: A History of Science, Technology and Philosophy in the 16th and 17th centuries. George Allen & Unwin, 1950.

External links

JohannesKepler.Info Kepler information and community website, launched on 27 December 2009

Harmonices mundi ("The Harmony of the Worlds") in fulltext facsimile; Carnegie-Mellon University

De Stella Nova in Pede Serpentarii ("On the new star in Ophiuchus's foot") in full text facsimile at Linda Hall Library

(1920 book, part of Men of Science series)

Electronic facsimile-editions of the rare book collection at the Vienna Institute of Astronomy

Audio - Cain/Gay (2010) Astronomy Cast Johannes Kepler and His Laws of Planetary Motion

Christianson, Gale E., Kepler's Somnium: Science Fiction and the Renaissance Scientist

Kollerstrom, Nicholas, Kepler's Belief in Astrology

References for Johannes Kepler

Plant, David, Kepler and the "Music of the Spheres"

Kepler, Napier, and the Third Law at MathPages

Calderón Urreiztieta, Carlos. Harmonice Mundi • Animated and multimedia version of Book V

Reading the mind of God 1997 drama based on his life by Patrick Gabridge

Johannes Kepler 2010 drama based on his life by Robert Lalonde

* Category:1571 births Category:1630 deaths Category:People from Weil der Stadt Category:16th-century German people Category:17th-century German people Category:16th-century Latin-language writers Category:16th-century mathematicians Category:17th-century astronomers Category:17th-century Latin-language writers Category:17th-century mathematicians Category:German expatriates in Austria Category:German expatriates in the Czech lands Category:People from Prague Category:Austrian Lutherans Category:Burials in Regensburg Category:Christian astrologers Category:Cosmologists Category:German astrologers Category:German astronomers Category:German Lutherans Category:German mathematicians Category:German science fiction writers Category:Religion and science Category:Walhalla enshrinees Category:Anglican saints

Honorific-prefix	The Honourable
Name	Michael Ignatieff
Honorific-suffix	PC MP
Office	Leader of the Opposition
Term start	December 10, 2008
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Primeminister	Stephen Harper
Predecessor	Stéphane Dion
Office2	Leader of the Liberal Party
Term start2	December 10, 2008Acting until May 2, 2009
Predecessor2	Stéphane Dion
Constituency mp3	Etobicoke-Lakeshore
Parliament3	Canadian
Term start3	February 6, 2006
Predecessor3	Jean Augustine
Birth date	May 12, 1947
Birth place	Toronto, Ontario
Party	Liberal Party
Spouse	Susan Barrowclough (1977–1997)Zsuzsanna Zsohar (1999–present)
Residence	Stornoway (official)Toronto (private)
Alma mater	University of Toronto (B.A.)University of OxfordHarvard University (Ph.D)King's College, Cambridge
Profession	AuthorScreenwriterJournalistProfessorAcademic
Signature	Michael Ignatieff Signature.svg

Michael Grant Ignatieff (; born May 12, 1947) is the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Leader of the Official Opposition in Canada. Known for his work as a historian and author, Ignatieff held senior academic posts at the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, Harvard University and the University of Toronto before entering politics in 2006.

In the 2006 federal election, Ignatieff was elected to the House of Commons as the Member of Parliament for Etobicoke—Lakeshore. That same year, he ran for the leadership of the Liberal Party, ultimately losing to Stéphane Dion on the fourth and final ballot. He served as the party's deputy leader under Dion, and held his seat in the 2008 federal election.

On November 14, 2008, Ignatieff announced his candidacy for the leadership of the Liberal Party to succeed Dion. On December 10, he was formally declared the interim leader in a caucus meeting; his succession as leader was ratified at the party's May 2009 convention.

Early life and education

Ignatieff was born on May 12, 1947 in Toronto, the elder son of Russian-born Canadian diplomat George Ignatieff and his Canadian-born wife, Jessie Alison (née Grant). Ignatieff's family moved abroad regularly in his early childhood as his father rose in the diplomatic ranks.

At the age of 11, Ignatieff was sent back to Toronto to attend Upper Canada College as a boarder in 1959. At UCC, Ignatieff was elected a school prefect as Head of Wedd's House, was the captain of the varsity soccer team, and served as editor-in-chief of the school's yearbook. As well, Ignatieff volunteered for the Liberal Party during the 1965 federal election by canvassing the York South riding. He resumed his work for the Liberal Party in 1968, as a national youth organizer and party delegate for the Pierre Elliott Trudeau party leadership campaign.

After high school, Ignatieff studied history at the University of Toronto's Trinity College (B.A., 1969). There, he met fellow student Bob Rae, from University College, who was a debating opponent and fourth-year roommate. After completing his undergraduate degree, Ignatieff took up his studies at the University of Oxford, where he studied under, and was influenced by, the famous liberal philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin, about whom he would later write. While an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, he was a part-time reporter for The Globe and Mail in 1964–65. In 1976, Ignatieff completed his Ph.D in History at Harvard University. He was granted a Cambridge M.A. by incorporation in 1978 on taking up a fellowship at King's College there. In 2005, Ignatieff left Harvard to become the Chancellor Jackman Professor in Human Rights Policy at the University of Toronto and a senior fellow of the university's Munk Centre for International Studies. He was then publicly mentioned as a possible Liberal candidate for the next federal election.

Family

Ignatieff numbers many prominent Canadian and Russian historical figures from both sides of his family among his ancestors. His mother's younger brother was the Canadian Conservative political philosopher George Grant (1918–1988), author of Lament for a Nation, while his great-aunt was Alice Parkin Massey, the wife of Canada's first home-grown Governor General Vincent Massey.

Ignatieff is married to Hungarian-born Zsuzsanna M. Zsohar, and has two children, Theo and Sophie, from his first marriage to Londoner Susan Barrowclough.

Ignatieff has a younger brother, Andrew, a community worker who assisted with Ignatieff's campaign. He describes himself as neither an atheist nor a 'believer'.

Recognition

Michael Ignatieff is a historian, a fiction writer and public intellectual who has written several books on international relations and nation building. His seventeen fiction and non-fiction books have been translated into twelve languages. He has contributed articles to newspapers such as The Globe and Mail and The New York Times Magazine. Maclean's named him among the "Top 10 Canadian Who's Who" in 1997 and one of the "50 Most Influential Canadians Shaping Society" in 2002. In 2003, Maclean's named him Canada's "Sexiest Cerebral Man."

Ignatieff's history of his family's experiences in nineteenth-century Russia (and subsequent exile), The Russian Album, won the Canadian 1987 Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction and the British Royal Society of Literature's Heinemann Prize. His 1998 biography of Isaiah Berlin was shortlisted for both the Jewish Quarterly Literary Prize for Non-Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

His text on Western interventionist policies and nation building, Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond, analyzes the NATO bombing of Kosovo and its subsequent aftermath. It won the Orwell Prize for political non-fiction in 2001. Ignatieff worked with the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty in preparing the report, The Responsibility to Protect, which examined the role of international involvement in Kosovo and Rwanda, and advocated a framework for 'humanitarian' intervention in future humanitarian crises. Ignatieff's general line is to highlight the moral imperative to intervene for humanitarian and other high motives, rejecting isolationism, but then drawing attention to practical and systematic limitations to successful interventions. His 2003 book, Empire Lite, argued that the post-intervention efforts in Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan were under-equipped to deal with the near-intractable problems they were facing.

His book on the dangers of ethnic nationalism in the post-Cold War period, Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism, won the Gordon Montador Award for Best Canadian Book on Social Issues and the University of Toronto's Lionel Gelber Prize. Blood and Belonging was based on Ignatieff's Gemini Award winning 1993 television series of the same name.

In 2004, he published The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror, a philosophical work analyzing human rights in the post-9/11 world. The book was a finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize, and attracted considerable attention for its contents. Ignatieff also writes fiction; one of his novels, Scar Tissue, was short-listed for the Booker Prize. In addition to writing, he has been a guest lecturer in a variety of settings. He delivered the Massey Lectures in 2000. Entitled The Rights Revolution, the series was released in print later that year. He has been a participant and panel leader at the World Economic Forum in Geneva.

Ignatieff was ranked 37th on a list of top public intellectuals prepared by Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines in 2005. His fictional works, Asya, Scar Tissue, and Charlie Johnson in the Flames cover, respectively, the life and travels of a Russian girl, the disintegration of one's mother due to neurological disease, and the haunting memories of a journalist in Kosovo. In all three works, however, one sees elements of the author's own life coming through. For instance, Ignatieff travelled to the Balkans and Kurdistan while working as a journalist, witnessing first hand the consequences of modern ethnic warfare. Similarly, his historical memoir, The Russian Album, traces his family's life in Russia and their troubles and subsequent emigration as a result of the Bolshevik Revolution.

A historian by training, he wrote A Just Measure of Pain, a history of prisons during the Industrial Revolution. His biography of Isaiah Berlin reveals the strong impression the celebrated philosopher made on Ignatieff. Philosophical writings by Ignatieff include The Needs of Strangers and The Rights Revolution. The latter work explores social welfare and community, and shows Berlin's influence on Ignatieff. These tie closely to Ignatieff's political writings on national self-determination and the imperatives of democratic self-government. Ignatieff has also written extensively on international affairs.

Ignatieff states that despite its admirable commitment to equality and group rights, Canadian society still places an unjust burden on women and gays and lesbians, and he says it is still difficult for newcomers of non-British or French descent to form an enduring sense of citizenship. Ignatieff attributes this to the "patch-work quilt of distinctive societies," emphasizing that civic bonds will only be easier when the understanding of Canada as a multinational community is more widely shared.

International affairs

Ignatieff has written extensively on international development, peacekeeping and the international responsibilities of Western nations. Critical of the limited-risk approach practiced by NATO in conflicts like the Kosovo War and the Rwandan Genocide, he says that there should be more active involvement and larger scale deployment of land forces by Western nations in future conflicts in the developing world. Ignatieff attempts to distinguish his approach from Neo-conservativism because the motives of the foreign engagement he advocates are essentially altruistic rather than selfserving.

In this vein, Ignatieff was originally a prominent supporter of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. Ignatieff said that the United States established "an empire lite, a global hegemony whose grace notes are free markets, human rights and democracy, enforced by the most awesome military power the world has ever known." The burden of that empire, he says, obliged the United States to expend itself unseating Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in the interests of international security and human rights. Ignatieff initially accepted the position of the George W. Bush administration: that containment through sanctions and threats would not prevent Hussein from selling weapons of mass destruction to international terrorists. Ignatieff believed that those weapons were still being developed in Iraq. Moreover, according to Ignatieff, "what Saddam Hussein had done to the Kurds and the Shia" in Iraq was sufficient justification for the invasion.

In the years following the invasion, Ignatieff reiterated his support for the war, if not the method in which it was conducted. "I supported an administration whose intentions I didn't trust," he averred, "believing that the consequences would repay the gamble. Now I realize that intentions do shape consequences."

On June 3, 2008, and on March 30, 2009, Michael Ignatieff voted in support of non-binding motions in the House of Commons calling on the government to "allow conscientious objectors...to a war not sanctioned by the United Nations.....[(including Iraq war resisters)]...to...remain in Canada..." However on Sept 29, 2010, when those motions were proposed as a binding private member's bill from Liberal MP Gerard Kennedy, CTV News reported that Ignatieff "walked out during the vote." The bill then failed to pass this second reading vote by seven votes.

Ignatieff has also spoken on the issue of Canadian participation in the North American Missile Defence Shield. In "Virtual War," Ignatieff refers to the likelihood of America developing a MDS to protect the United States. Nowhere did Ignatieff voice support for Canadian participation in such a scheme. Further, in October 2006, Ignatieff indicated that he personally would not support ballistic missile defence nor the weaponization of space.

In 2005 Ignatieff delivered the Amnesty 2005 Lecture at Trinity College in Dublin where-in he provided evidence to support his theory that; "We wouldn't have international human rights without the leadership of the United States".

The Lesser Evil approach

Ignatieff has argued that Western democracies may have to resort to "lesser evils" like indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, assassinations, and pre-emptive wars in order to combat the greater evil of terrorism. He states that as a result, societies should strengthen their democratic institutions to keep these necessary evils from becoming as offensive to freedom and democracy as the threats they are meant to prevent. The 'Lesser Evil' approach has been criticized by some prominent human rights advocates, like Conor Gearty, for incorporating a problematic form of moral language that can be used to legitimize forms of torture. But other human rights advocates, like Human Rights Watch's Kenneth Roth, have defended Ignatieff, saying his work "cannot fairly be equated with support for torture or 'torture lite'." In the context of this "lesser evil" analysis, Ignatieff has discussed whether or not liberal democracies should employ coercive interrogation and torture. Ignatieff has adamantly maintained that he supports a complete ban on torture. His definition of torture, according to his 2004 Op-ed in the New York Times, does not include "forms of sleep deprivation that do not result in lasting harm to mental or physical health, together with disinformation and disorientation (like keeping prisoners in hoods)."

Political career

In 2004, three Liberal organizers, former Liberal candidate Alfred Apps, Ian Davey (son of Senator Keith Davey) and lawyer Daniel Brock, travelled to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to convince Ignatieff to move back to Canada and run for the Canadian House of Commons, and to consider a possible bid for the Liberal leadership should Paul Martin retire. Liberal Party stalwart, Rocco Rossi had previously mentioned to Davey that Davey's father had said that Ignatieff had the makings of a prime minister. As a result of the activities of Apps,Brock and Davey, in January 2005, speculation began in the press that Ignatieff could be a star candidate for the Liberals in the next election, and possibly a candidate to succeed Paul Martin, then the leader of the governing Liberal Party of Canada.

After months of rumours and repeated denials, Ignatieff confirmed in November 2005 that he intended to run for a seat in the House of Commons in the winter 2006 election. It was announced that Ignatieff would seek the Liberal nomination in the Toronto riding of Etobicoke—Lakeshore.

Some Ukrainian-Canadian members of the riding association objected to the nomination, citing a perceived anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Blood and Belonging, where Ignatieff said: "I have reasons to take the Ukraine seriously indeed. But, to be honest, I'm having trouble. Ukrainian independence conjures up images of peasants in embroidered shirts, the nasal whine of ethnic instruments, phony Cossacks in cloaks and boots...".." Critics also questioned his commitment to Canada, pointing out that Ignatieff had lived outside of Canada for more than 30 years and had referred to himself as an American many times. When asked about it by Peter Newman in a Maclean's interview published on April 6, 2006, Ignatieff said: "Sometimes you want to increase your influence over your audience by appropriating their voice, but it was a mistake. Every single one of the students from 85 countries who took my courses at Harvard knew one thing about me: I was that funny Canadian." Two other candidates filed for the nomination but were disqualified (one, because he was not a member of the party and the second because he had failed to resign from his position on the riding association executive). Ignatieff went on to defeat the Conservative candidate by a margin of roughly 5,000 votes to win the seat.

Leadership bid

After the Liberal government was defeated in the January 2006 federal election, Paul Martin resigned from party leadership. On April 7, 2006, Ignatieff announced his candidacy in the upcoming Liberal leadership race, joining several others who had already declared their candidacy.

Ignatieff received several high profile endorsements of his candidacy. His campaign was headed by Senator David Smith, who had been a Chrétien organizer, along with Ian Davey, Daniel Brock, Alfred Apps and Paul Lalonde, a Toronto lawyer and son of Marc Lalonde.

An impressive team of policy advisors was assembled, led by Toronto lawyer Brad Davis, and including Brock, fellow lawyers Mark Sakamoto, Sachin Aggarwal, Jason Rosychuck, Jon Penney, Nigel Marshman, Alex Mazer, Will Amos, and Alix Dostal, former Ignatieff student Jeff Anders, banker Clint Davis, economists Blair Stransky, Leslie Church and Ellis Westwood, and Liberal operatives Alexis Levine, Marc Gendron, Mike Pal, Julie Dzerowicz, Patrice Ryan, Taylor Owen and Jamie Macdonald.

Following the selection of delegates in the party's "Super Weekend" exercise on the last weekend of September, Ignatieff gained more support from delegates than other candidates with 30% voting for him.

In August 2006, Ignatieff said he was "not losing any sleep" over dozens of civilian deaths caused by Israel's attack on Qana during its military actions in Lebanon. Ignatieff recanted those words the following week. Then, on October 11, 2006, Ignatieff described the Qana attack as a war crime (committed by Israel). Susan Kadis, who had previously been Ignatieff's campaign co-chair, withdrew her support following the comment. Other Liberal leadership candidates have also criticized Ignatieff's comments. Ariela Cotler, a Jewish community leader and the wife of prominent Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, left the party following Ignatieff's comments. Ignatieff later qualified his statement, saying "Whether war crimes were committed in the attack on Qana is for international bodies to determine. That doesn't change the fact that Qana was a terrible tragedy."

On October 14, Ignatieff announced that he would visit Israel, to meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders and "learn first-hand their view of the situation". He noted that Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Israel's own B'Tselem have stated that war crimes were committed in Qana, describing the suggestion as "a serious matter precisely because Israel has a record of compliance, concern and respect for the laws of war and human rights" Ignatieff added that he would not meet with Palestinian leaders who did not recognize Israel. However, the Jewish organization sponsoring the trip subsequently cancelled it, because of too much media attention.

Montreal Convention

At the leadership convention in Montreal, taking place at Palais des Congrès, Ignatieff entered as the apparent front-runner, having elected more delegates to the convention than any other contender. However, polls consistently showed he had weak second-ballot support, and those delegates not already tied to him would be unlikely to support him later.

On December 1, 2006, Michael Ignatieff led the leadership candidates on the first ballot, garnering 29% support. The subsequent ballots were cast the following day, and Ignatieff managed a small increase, to 31% on the second ballot, good enough to maintain his lead over Bob Rae, who had attracted 24% support, and Stéphane Dion, who garnered 20%. However, due to massive movement towards Stéphane Dion by delegates who supported Gerard Kennedy, Ignatieff dropped to second on the third ballot. Shortly before voting for the third ballot was completed, with the realization that there was a Dion-Kennedy pact, Ignatieff campaign co-chair Denis Coderre made an appeal to Rae to join forces and prevent the ardent federalist Dion from winning the leadership (on the basis that Dion's federalism would alienate Quebecers), but Rae turned down the offer and opted to release his delegates. With the help of the Kennedy delegates, Dion jumped up to 37% support on the third ballot, in contrast to Ignatieff's 34% and Rae's 29%. Bob Rae was eliminated and the bulk of his delegates opted to vote for Dion rather than Ignatieff. In the fourth and final round of voting, Ignatieff took 2084 votes and lost the contest to Stéphane Dion, who won with 2521 votes.

Lauren P. S. Epstein, the former prime minister of the Harvard Canadian Club, commented on the loss: "What it came down to in the final vote was that the liberal delegates were looking for someone who was more likely to unite the party; Ignatieff had ardent supporters, but at the same time, he had people who would never under any circumstances support him."

Ignatieff confirmed that he would run as the Liberal MP for Etobicoke—Lakeshore in the next federal election.

Deputy leadership

On December 18, 2006, new Liberal leader Stéphane Dion named Ignatieff his deputy leader, in line with Dion's plan to give high-ranking positions to each of his former leadership rivals.

During three by-elections held on September 18, 2007, the Halifax Chronicle-Herald reported that unidentified Dion supporters were accusing Ignatieff's supporters of undermining by-election efforts, with the goal of showing that Dion could not hold on to the party's Quebec base. Susan Delacourt of the Toronto Star described this as a recurring issue in the party with the leadership runner-up. Although Ignatieff called Dion to deny the allegations, the Globe and Mail cited the NDP's widening lead after the article's release, suggested that the report had a negative impact on the Liberals' morale. The Liberals were defeated in their former stronghold of Outremont.

Since then, Ignatieff has urged the Liberals to put aside their differences, saying "united we win, divided we lose".

Interim leadership of the Liberal Party

Barack Obama in Ottawa on February 19, 2009]] Dion announced that he would schedule his departure as Liberal leader for the next party convention, after the Liberals lost seats and support in the 40th general election. Ignatieff held a news conference on November 13, 2008, to once again announce his candidacy for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada.

When the Liberals reached an accord with the other opposition parties to form a coalition and defeat the government, Ignatieff reluctantly endorsed it. He was reportedly uncomfortable with a coalition with the NDP and outside support from the Bloc Québécois, and has been described as one of the last Liberals to sign on. After the announcement to prorogue Parliament, delaying the non-confidence motion until January 2009, Dion announced his intention to stay on as interim leader until the party selected a new one. On December 10, he was formally declared the interim leader in a caucus meeting, and his position was ratified at the May 2009 convention. The vote was mostly a formality as there were no other candidates for the leadership.

On August 31, 2009, Ignatieff announced that the Liberal Party would withdraw support for the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. However, the NDP under Jack Layton abstained and the Conservatives survived the confidence motion. Ignatieff's attempt to force a September 2009 election was reported as a miscalculation, as polls showed that most Canadians did not want another election. Ignatieff's popularity as well as that of the Liberals dropped off considerably immediately afterwards.

Notable political stances

Extension of Canada's Afghanistan mission

Since his election to Parliament, Ignatieff has been one of the few opposition members supporting the minority Conservative government's commitment to Canadian military activity in Afghanistan. Prime Minister Stephen Harper called a vote in the House of Commons for May 17, 2006, on extending the Canadian Forces current deployment in Afghanistan until February 2009. During the debate, Ignatieff expressed his "unequivocal support for the troops in Afghanistan, for the mission, and also for the renewal of the mission." He argued that the Afghanistan mission tests the success of Canada's shift from "the peacekeeping paradigm to the peace-enforcement paradigm," the latter combining "military, reconstruction and humanitarian efforts together."

The opposition Liberal caucus of 102 MPs was divided, with 24 MPs supporting the extension, 66 voting against, and 12 abstentions. Among Liberal leadership candidates, Ignatieff and Scott Brison voted for the extension. Ignatieff led the largest Liberal contingent of votes in favour, with at least five of his caucus supporters voting along with him to extend the mission. The vote was 149–145 for extending the military deployment.

In a subsequent campaign appearance, Ignatieff reiterated his view of the mission in Afghanistan. He stated: "the thing that Canadians have to understand about Afghanistan is that we are well past the era of Pearsonian peacekeeping."

Quebec as a nation

On October 21, 2006, the Quebec wing of the Liberal Party of Canada adopted a resolution that called for the entire Liberal Party of Canada to recognize "the Quebec nation", and to form a task force to find possible ways to "officialize this historical and social reality." Ignatieff endorsed the resolution and suggested that it may need to be entrenched into the Constitution of Canada at some point down the road. Two of his former leadership rivals, Bob Rae and Stéphane Dion have agreed on the nation label, but do not want to reopen the Constitution. Recognizing Quebec's "distinct" nature in the Constitution was attempted previously by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney with the Meech Lake Accord and the Charlottetown Accord, as well as by a motion by then-Prime Minister Jean Chrétien in 1995.

On November 22, 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared his support for the Québécois being recognized as a nation within Canada. This recognition of the "Québécois nation" is essentially of symbolic political nature, and represents no constitutional changes or legal consequences. Prime Minister Harper introduced a motion to the House of Commons that called for the recognition "that the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada". The motion was carried by the House of Commons on November 27, 2006, by a vote of 266–16, with every party supporting the motion, and a handful of Liberal members voting against, as well as independent MP Garth Turner. Following the adoption of this motion, the Liberal motion was withdrawn, and not presented to the convention.

Climate change policy

During the Liberal leadership race in 2006, Ignatieff advocated strong measures, including measures to address climate change.

Following the 2008 election, he shifted his approach. In a speech to the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce in February, 2009, he said: "You've got to work with the grain of Canadians and not against them. I think we learned a lesson in the last election."

Honorary degrees

Michael Ignatieff as of June 2009 has received 11 Honorary Doctorates.

Bishop's University in Lennoxville, Quebec in 1995 University of Stirling in Stirling, Scotland (D.Univ) on June 28, 1996 Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario (LL.D) on October 25, 2001 University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario (D.Litt) on October 26, 2001 University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, New Brunswick (D.Litt) in 2001 McGill University in Montreal, Quebec (D.Litt) on June 17, 2002 University of Regina in Regina, Saskatchewan (LL.D) on May 28, 2003 Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington (LL.D) in 2004 Niagara University in Lewiston, New York, USA (DHL) May 21, 2006

Bibliography

Screenplays

Onegin, 1999 (with Peter Ettedgui)

1919, 1985 (with Hugh Brody)

Drama

Dialogue in the Dark, for the BBC

Fiction

Asya, 1991

Scar Tissue, 1993

Charlie Johnson in the Flames, 2005

Non-fiction

A Just Measure of Pain: Penitentiaries in the Industrial Revolution, 1780–1850, 1978

(ed. with István Hont) Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment, Cambridge University Press , 1983. ISBN 0-521-23397-6

The Needs of Strangers, 1984

The Russian Album, 1987

Blood and Belonging: Journeys Into the New Nationalism, 1994

Warrior's Honour: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience, 1997

Isaiah Berlin: A Life, 1998

Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond, 2000

The Rights Revolution, Viking, 2000

Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, Anansi Press Ltd, 2001

Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, Minerva, 2003

The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror, Princeton University Press, 2004 (2003 Gifford Lectures; sample chapters)

American Exceptionalism and Human Rights (ed.), Princeton University Press, 2005.

True Patriot Love, Penguin Group Canada, 2009.

Recent articles

Getting Iraq Wrong, The New York Times Magazine, August 5, 2007.

What I Would Do If I Were The Prime Minister. Maclean's, September 4, 2006.

The Broken Contract, The New York Times Magazine, September 25, 2005.

Iranian Lessons, The New York Times Magazine, July 17, 2005.

Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom Is Theirs to Spread?, The New York Times Magazine, June 26, 2005.

The Uncommitted, The New York Times Magazine, January 30, 2005.

The Terrorist as Auteur, The New York Times Magazine, November 14, 2004.

Mirage in the Desert, The New York Times Magazine, June 27, 2004.

Could We Lose the War on Terror?: Lesser Evils, (cover story), The New York Times Magazine, May 2, 2004.

The Year of Living Dangerously, The New York Times Magazine, March 14, 2004.

Arms and the Inspector, Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2004.

Peace, Order and Good Government: A Foreign Policy Agenda for Canada, OD Skelton Lecture, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Ottawa, March 12, 2004.

Why America Must Know Its Limits, Financial Times, December 24, 2003.

A Mess of Intervention. Peacekeeping. Pre-emption. Liberation. Revenge. When should we send in the Troops?, The New York Times Magazine [cover story], September 7, 2003.

I am Iraq, The New York Times Magazine, March 31, 2003 [Reprinted in The Guardian and The National Post].

American Empire: The Burden, (cover story), The New York Times Magazine, January 5, 2003.

Acceptance Speech from the 2003 Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thinking

Mission Impossible?, A Review of A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis, by David Rieff (Simon and Schuster, 2002), Printed in The New York Review of Books, December 19, 2002.

When a Bridge Is Not a Bridge, New York Times Magazine, October 27, 2002.

The Divided West, The Financial Times, August 31, 2002.

Nation Building Lite, (cover story) The New York Times Magazine, July 28, 2002.

The Rights Stuff, New York Times of Books, June 13, 2002.

No Exceptions?, Legal Affairs, May/June 2002.

Why Bush Must Send in His Troops, The Guardian, April 19, 2002.

Barbarians at the Gates?, The New York Times Book Review, February 18, 2002.

Is the Human Rights Era Ending?, New York Times, February 5, 2002.

Intervention and State Failure, Dissent, Winter 2002.

Kaboul-Sarajevo: Les nouvelles frontières de l'empire, Seuil, 2002.

See also

List of Canadian Leaders of the Opposition

List of Canadian Leaders of the Opposition in the Senate

Official Opposition (Canada)

References

External links

Michael Ignatieff

Michael Ignatieff Biography

"Michael Grant Ignatieff," from the Canadian Encyclopedia

Articles by Ignatieff

The Meaning of Diana, Prospect Magazine, October 23, 1997. A review of Diana Spencer.

Why Bush must send in his troops, The Guardian, April 19, 2002. On why Ignatieff believes a two-state solution is the last chance for Middle East peace.

The Burden, The New York Times Magazine, January 5, 2003. Written just prior to the Iraq war, this article explains his support for the invasion.

The Year of Living Dangerously, The New York Times Magazine, March 14, 2004. A follow-up to The Burden, discussing the war.

Lesser Evils, The New York Times Magazine, May 2, 2004, An article on finding the balance between civil liberties and security.

A Generous Helping of Liberal Brains, The Globe and Mail, March 4, 2005 (subscription). An excerpt from his address to the biennial policy conference of the Liberal Party.

Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom Is Theirs to Spread? , The New York Times Magazine, June 26, 2005. Ignatieff On Spreading Democracy

Category:1947 births Category:Living people Category:Academics of the London School of Economics Category:Academics of the University of London Category:Academics of the University of Oxford Category:Alumni of the University of Oxford Category:Eastern Orthodox Christians from Canada Category:Canadian historians Category:Canadian novelists Category:Canadian philosophers Category:Canadian people of Russian descent Category:Canadian people of Scottish descent Category:Fellows of King's College, Cambridge Category:Governor General's Award winning non-fiction writers Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Harvard University faculty Category:Leaders of the Liberal Party of Canada Category:Liberal Party of Canada MPs Category:Massey Lecturers Category:Members of the Canadian House of Commons from Ontario Category:Russian nobility Category:Russian Orthodox Christians Category:Scholars of nationalism Category:Trinity College (Canada) alumni Category:University of British Columbia faculty Category:University of Toronto alumni Category:Upper Canada College alumni Category:University of Toronto faculty Category:Leaders of the Opposition in the Canadian House of Commons Category:Gifford Lecturers