''Doctor Copernicus'' is a novel by John Banville, first published in

1976 Events January * January 3 – The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights enters into force. * January 5 – The Pol Pot regime proclaims a new constitution for Democratic Kampuchea. * January 11 – The 1976 Phila ...

. "A richly textured tale" about Nicolaus Copernicus, it won that year's James Tait Black Memorial Prize. ''Doctor Copernicus'' contains four sections. The first two focus on the subject's life until about the age of 36. In the third, Copernicus's aide

Rheticus Georg Joachim de Porris, also known as Rheticus ( /ˈrɛtɪkəs/; 16 February 1514 – 5 December 1576), was a mathematician, astronomer, cartographer, navigational-instrument maker, medical practitioner, and teacher. He is perhaps best known for ...

narrates how he convinced Copernicus to publish '' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium''. The fourth focuses on the great scientist's death. Thirty years after it first appeared, Brian McIlroy praised ''Doctor Copernicus'' for its "great intellectual ambition." Linda Hutcheon, in ''A Poetics of Postmodernism'', wrote that it is a " historiographic metafiction."

References

1976 novels Cultural depictions of Nicolaus Copernicus Historical novels Novels by John Banville Novels set in the 16th century Secker & Warburg books {{1970s-hist-novel-stub