An Orrery Publication
The people behind the physics
Short stories from the history of science. Each one takes a figure and works in three movements: the myth as it is usually told, the truth behind it, and why the truth is very often the better story. We do not novelise — where the record is thin, we say so.
The Myth and the TruthRobert Hooke named the cell, wrote the century's most beautiful book, surveyed half of London after it burned, and quarrelled with Newton. No authenticated portrait of him survives — and the reason usually given for that is itself a myth.