Michael Hoskin started academic life in Classics, and switched to mathematics on entering London University. In 1952 he came to Peterhouse for a PhD in algebraic geometry. In the following year he applied for a newly-established Lectureship in History of Science at Leicester. Two years later he was appointed to the corresponding lectureship in Cambridge, and helped build up what is now the Department of History and Philosophy of Science. In 1965 he was invited to become a foundation Fellow of St Edmund's, and was for five minutes the only Fellow. He served as Vice-Master, Senior Tutor, and secretary of the Trustees. In 1969 he was invited by Churchill College to build the proposed new Archives Centre. He returned to St Edmund's in 2002 on election as Emeritus Fellow. Michael Hoskin is primarily an historian of stellar astronomy with a particular interest in the Herschel family. In 1970 he founded the Journal for the History of Astronomy and has edited it ever since. He also works in astronomy in prehistory, and has personally measured the orientations of some two thousand European and African dolmens. The International Astronomical Union has designated asteroid 12223 as 12223 Minor Planet HOSKIN in his honour.

Following the steps of human reasoning and technology from prehistoric stone observatories to modern astrophysics, the reader of this inviting volume receives an excellent overview of the development of astronomy as science. Edited by Hoskin, the editor of Journal for the History of Astronomy, the book is a concise yet compelling record of human intellectual progress embracing Mayan, Babylonian, Greek, Islamic, and medieval Latin astronomy and leading up to the arrival of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton. Their influence provided the needed change in approach from geometry to physics and forced long-delayed acceptance of the elliptical orbits of planets, a sun-centered system, and an earth that moved within it. Besides significant figures and places, the book acknowledges historical and cultural forces at work in its story, while inserts explore other worthy tidbits such as the rather remarkable devices in use before the invention of the telescope.