The fascinating letters of Galileo's eldest daughter to her father Placed in a convent at the age of thirteen, Virginia Galilei, Galileo's eldest daughter, wrote to her father continually. Now Dava Sobel has translated into English all 124 surviving letters that Virginia (renamed Suor Maria Celeste at the convent) wrote to Galileo. The letters span a dramatic decade that included the Thirty Years' War, the bubonic plague, and the development of Galileo's own universe-changing discoveries. Suor Maria Celeste's letters touch on these events, but mostly they focus on details of...
The fascinating letters of Galileo's eldest daughter to her father Placed in a convent at the age of thirteen, Virginia Galilei, Galileo's ...
Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that "the longitude problem" was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day-and had been for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land. Thousands of lives and the increasing fortunes of nations hung on a resolution. One man, John Harrison, in complete opposition to the scientific community, dared to imagine a mechanical solution-a clock that would keep precise time at sea, something no clock had ever...
Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that "the longitude problem" was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day-and had been f...
New from #1 New York Times bestselling author Dava Sobel, the "inspiring" (People), little-known true story of women's landmark contributions to astronomy
"A joy to read." --The Wall Street JournalNamed one of the best books of the year by NPR, TheEconomist, Smithsonian, Nature, and NPR'sScience Friday
Nominated for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or...
New from #1 New York Times bestselling author Dava Sobel, the "inspiring" (People), little-known true story of women's landmark co...
