The career of the famous man whose name stands at the head of this chapter is one of the most remarkable in the history of human learning. There may have been other discoverers who have done more for science than ever Ptolemy accomplished, but there never has been any other discoverer whose authority on the subject of the movements of the heavenly bodies has held sway over the minds of men for so long a period as the fourteen centuries during which his opinions reigned supreme. The doctrines he laid down in his famous book, "The Almagest," prevailed throughout those ages. No substantial addition was made in all that time to the undoubted truths which this work contained. No important correction was made of the serious errors with which Ptolemy's theories were contaminated. The authority of Ptolemy as to all things in the heavens, and as to a good many things on the earth (for the same illustrious man was also a diligent geographer), was invariably final.

Though every child may now know more of the actual truths of the celestial motions than ever Ptolemy knew, yet the fact that his work exercised such an astonishing effect on the human intellect for some sixty generations, shows that it must have been an extraordinary production. We must look into the career of this wonderful man to discover wherein lay the secret of that marvellous success which made him the unchallenged instructor of the human race for such a protracted period.

Includes detailed discussion on all of the great astronomers, including Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Flamsteed and Herschel. By the mathematician, Irish astronomer to Lord Rosse in 1865, Irish Astronomer-Royal in 1874 and writer of popular science books.

Sir Robert Stawell Ball FRS (1 July 1840 – 25 November 1913) was an Irish astronomer who founded the screw theory.

He was the son of naturalist Robert Ball and Amelia Gresley Hellicar.

Ball worked for Lord Rosse from 1865 to 1867. In 1867 he became Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Royal College of Science in Dublin. There he lectured on mechanics and published an elementary account of the science

In 1874 Ball was appointed Royal Astronomer of Ireland and Andrews Professor of Astronomy in the University of Dublin atDunsink Observatory.

Ball contributed to the science of kinematics by delineating the screw displacement:

When Ball and the screw theorists speak of screws they no longer mean actual cylindrical objects with helical threads cut into them but the possible motion of any body whatsoever, including that of the screw independently of the nut.

Ball's treatise The Theory of Screws (1876) is now in the public domain.

In 1882 Popular Science Monthly carried his article "A Glimpse through the Corridors of Time". The following year it carried his two-part article on "The Boundaries of Astronomy".

Ball expounded the tides in Time and Tide: a Romance of the Moon In 1892 he was appointed Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry at Cambridge University at the same time becoming director of the Cambridge Observatory. He was a fellow of King's College, Cambridge.

In 1900 Cambridge University Press published A Treatise on the Theory of Screws. That year he also published The Story of the Heavens. Much in the limelight, he stood as President of the Quaternion Society.

In 1908 he published A Treatise on Spherical Astronomy, which is a textbook on astronomy starting from spherical trigonometry and the celestial sphere, considering atmospheric refraction and aberration of light, and introducing basic use of a generalized instrument.

His work The Story of the Heavens is mentioned in the "Ithaka" chapter of Ulysses. His lectures, articles and books (e.g. Starland and The Story of the Heavens) were mostly popular and simple in style.

Robert Ball is buried at the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge, with his wife Lady Francis Elizabeth Ball. Their children were: Frances Amelia, Robert Steele, William Valentine (later Sir), Mary Agnetta, Charles Rowan Hamilton, and Randall Gresley (later Colonel).