SCIENCE: A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionised the CosmosBy Dava Sobel Bloomsbury, 273pp. £14.99

IN THE HEAT of the Lutheran Reformation, rumours of a strange new theory of the heavens began to circulate in northern Europe. Nicolaus Copernicus, a Polish canon of the Catholic Church, was making the risible suggestion that Earth was in orbit around the sun rather than standing still in the centre of the universe.

The rumours even reached the ears of Martin Luther himself, who allegedly remarked, “So goes it now. Whoever wants to be clever must agree with nothing that others esteem. He must do something of his own. This is what that fellow does who wishes to turn the whole of astronomy upside down.”

While Luther may have scorned such novel theories, one of his followers, Georg Rheticus, was convinced that the Polish physician and astronomer was on the right track. Determined to help publish Copernicus's writings, Rheticus set off on the treacherous journey from Luther's stronghold of Wittenberg to Copernicus's home in Catholic Frauenburg, where he managed to work in close collaboration with Copernicus for two years, before bringing his precious manuscript On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheresto be published in Nuremberg.

In a tactical defensive move, the book was dedicated to the current pope, Paul III. While Copernicus was on his deathbed, an anonymous preface was added, probably to reduce the risk of church condemnation of the book, suggesting that its hypothesis of Earth’s motion was intended not as a serious suggestion so much as a helpful calculating device.

Copernicus died just as his book was published, and it was only much later, when Galileo began to champion the Copernican theory, that it was placed on the notorious Index of Prohibited Books, leading to Galileo’s Inquisition trial and abjuration of 1633.

Dava Sobel's A More Perfect Heaventraces the complexity of the extraordinarily fertile historical moment that gave birth to Copernicus's infamous work. As in her previous bestselling historical nonfiction works, Longitudeand Galileo's Daughter, Sobel immerses herself in the rich personal stories that surround her astronomical protagonist, rendering scientists fallible, amusing and personable.

In contrast to her previous books, at the centre of A More Perfect Heavenis a play, a humorous work of fiction sandwiched between two thick slices of historical narrative about Copernicus and his revolutionary book. As a narrative strategy, this is unusual. The play came first, Sobel tells us, and it was on the publisher's advice that the book was scaffolded around it, as a more detailed introduction to the context and consequences of Copernicus's theory.

The play, at times even farcical in its take on Copernicus's dysfunctional household, contrasts strongly with the much darker portrayal of the canon of Frauenberg in John Banville's Doctor Copernicus, one source of inspiration for Sobel.

The focus of the action in Sobel’s play is the peculiar dynamic between Copernicus and his heretical disciple Rheticus, with some inappropriate intimacies thrown in for good measure. The play is light, and occasionally hilarious, and certainly an original avenue into the book “nobody read”, as some have described Copernicus’s fiendishly technical astronomical masterpiece.

While Copernicus did make some astronomical observations, the primary motivation behind his rearrangement of the solar system seems to have been aesthetic preference.

The Earth-centred astronomy of Ptolemy (only recently available to astronomers in the original Greek in Copernicus’s time) had to find a way to explain the peculiar motions of the planets in the skies, which sometimes moved in one direction, sometimes slowed down and sometimes even went backwards. Ptolemy invoked a series of complex devices to account for the movements of the planets.

By suggesting that the planets rotated around the sun, Copernicus simplified things considerably but suggested some unfortunate consequences.

If Earth was really rotating every 24 hours, why wouldn’t people, trees and pigs fly off its surface at great speed? Why wouldn’t everything be blown away by a 1,000km/h wind? (It was only later that Galileo, followed by Newton, would begin to develop a theory of inertial motion that could explain why this doesn’t happen.) And, even more disturbingly, Copernicus’s more elegant picture of the universe implied that the stars were at vast distances from Earth, expanding the cosmos immeasurably.

It was understandable, then, that the nervous canon held back on publishing his ideas for fear of ridicule, and it was only through the encouragement of Rheticus that they saw the light of day.

Sobel is a gifted storyteller, with the ability to bring historical characters to life and immerse the reader in the wonderfully peculiar world view of the 16th century. In A More Perfect Heaventhe most lively writing is in the play, but the whole book is a wonderfully accessible introduction to the Polish clergyman who turned the universe inside out.

Michael John Gorman is founding director of Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin. Surface Tension: The Future of Water, the gallery's next exhibition, opens on October 21st. sciencegallery.com