If it were not for a young mathematician named Georg Joachim Rheticus, there's a good chance Nicolaus Copernicus' groundbreaking work, On the Revolution of Heavenly Spheres, would never have been made available to scientists throughout the world.

Rheticus convinced Copernicus to revise and publish his manuscript before his death. Now, in an attempt to give the unheralded mathematician his due, Jack Repcheck restores Rheticus to his rightful place in the Copernicus story.

This intriguing combination of biography, history and science captures the story of these two men, set against a background of the social, political and religious unrest that shaped Central Europe in the 16th century.

This overlooked chapter in the history of science reads like a novel and will fascinate those readers who want to know the "rest of the story" about Copernicus' astronomical pursuits.