Galileo's Daughter A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love

by Sobel, Dava

• ISBN13: 9780802713438
• ISBN10: 0802713432
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-10-01
• Publisher: Walker Books

Summary

Inspired by a long fascination with Galileo, and by the remarkable surviving letters of Galileo's daughter, a cloistered nun, Dava Sobel has written a biography unlike any other of the man Albert Einstein called "the father of modern physics- indeed of modern science altogether." Galileo's Daughter also presents a stunning portrait of a person hitherto lost to history, described by her father as "a woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and most tenderly attached to me." The son of a musician, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) tried at first to enter a monastery before engaging the skills that made him the foremost scientist of his day. Though he never left Italy, his inventions and discoveries were heralded around the world. Most sensationally, his telescopes allowed him to reveal a new reality in the heavens and to reinforce the astounding argument that the Earth moves around the Sun. For this belief, he was brought before the Holy Office of the Inquisition, accused of heresy, and forced to spend his last years under house arrest. Of Galileo's three illegitimate children, the eldest best mirrored his own brilliance, industry, and sensibility, and by virtue of these qualities became his confidante. Born Virginia in 1600, she was thirteen when Galileo placed her in a convent near him in Florence, where she took the most appropriate name of Suor Maria Celeste. Her loving support, which Galileo repaid in kind, proved to be her father's greatest source of strength throughout his most productive and tumultuous years. Her presence, through letters which Sobel has translated from their original Italian and masterfully woven into the narrative, graces her father's life now as it did then. Galileo's Daughter dramatically recolors the personality and accomplishment of a mythic figure whose seventeenth-century clash with Catholic doctrine continues to define the schism between science and religion. Moving between Galileo's grand public life and Maria Celeste's sequestered world, Sobel illuminates the Florence of the Medicis and the papal court in Rome during the pivotal era when humanity's perception of its place in the cosmos was about to be overturned. In that same time, while the bubonic plague wreaked its terrible devastation and the Thirty Years' War tipped fortunes across Europe, one man sought to reconcile the Heaven he revered as a good Catholic with the heavens he revealed through his telescope. With all the human drama and scientific adventure that distinguished Dava Sobel's previous book Longitude, Galileo's Daughter is an unforgettable story.

Author Biography

Dava Sobel is an award-winning science writer and former New York Times reporter who has contributed articles to Audubon, Discover, and The New Yorker. As a contributing editor to Harvard Magazine, she covered scientific research and the history of science.

Table of Contents

PART ONE. TO FLORENCE
She Who was so precious to you	3	(10)
This grand book the universe	13	(12)
Bright stars speak of your virtues	25	(12)
To have the truth seen and recognized	37	(12)
In the very face of the sun	49	(10)
Observant executrix of God's commands	59	(12)
The malice of my persecutors	71	(13)
Con secure here among shadows	84	(15)
PART TWO. ON BELLOSGUARDO
How our father is favored	99	(11)
To busy my self in your service	110	(12)
What we require above all also	122	(11)
Because of our zeal	133	(10)
Through my memory of their eloquence	143	(10)
A small and trifling body	153	(9)
On the right path, by the grace of God	162	(13)
The tempest of our many torments	175	(12)
PART THREE. IN ROME
While seeking to immortalize your fame	187	(10)
Since the Lord chastises us with these whips	197	(9)
The hope of having you always near	206	(10)
That I should be begged to publish such a work	216	(15)
PART FOUR. IN CARE OF THE TUSCAN EMBASSY, VILLA MEDICI, ROME
How anxiously I live, awaiting word from you	231	(11)
In the chambers of the Holy office of the Inquisition	242	(13)
Vainglorious ambition, pure ignorance , and inadvertence	255	(9)
Faith vested in the miraculous Madonna of Impruneta	264	(9)
Judgment passed on your book and your person	273	(12)
PART FIVE. AT SIENA
Not knowing how to refuse him the keys	285	(10)
Terrible destruction on the feast of San Lorenzo	295	(11)
Recitation of the penitential psalms	306	(10)
The book of life, or, A prophet accepted in his own land	316	(15)
PART SIX. FROM ARCETRI
My soul and its longing	331	(9)
Until I have this from your lips	340	(8)
As I struggle to understand	348	(9)
The memory of the sweetnesses	357	(12)
In Galileo's Time	369	(6)
Florentine Weights, Measures, Currency	375	(1)
Bibliography	376	(7)
Notes	383	(11)
Appreciation	394	(2)
Art Credits	396	(3)
Index	399

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