Galileo's Daughter

dava sobel fritz weaver

Galileo Galilei was the foremost scientist of his day. Though he never left Italy, his inventions and discoveries were heralded around the world. His telescopes allowed him to reveal the heavens and enforce 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.

Galileo's oldest child was thirteen when he placed her in a convent near him in Florence, where she took the most appropriate name of Suor Maria Celeste. Her support was her father's greatest source of strength. Her presence, through letters which Sobel has translated from 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 public life and Maria Celeste's sequestered world, Sobel illuminates the Florence of the Medicis and the papal court in Rome during an era when humanity's perception of its place in the cosmos was overturned. With all the human drama and scientific adventure that distinguished Latitude, GALILEO'S DAUGHTER is an unforgettable story.

Genres historynonfictionsciencebiographyitalybook clubbiography memoirhistoricalreligionastronomy

0 pages, Audio CD

First published October 1,1999

Literary awards

independent publisher book award (ippy), los angeles times book prize,

Places

florence tuscany,

This edition

Format: 0 pages, Audio CD
Published: October 4, 2005 by Random House Audio
ISBN: 9780739322901
ASIN: 0739322907
Language: English

Characters More characters

Galileo Galilei

An Italian physicist, mathematician, engineer, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the scientific revolution during the Renaissance. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations and sup...
Sister Maria Celeste

A Poor Clare nun, apothecary, and daughter of the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei. Galileo described Maria Celeste as "a woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and most tenderly attached to me".more...

About the author

dava sobel

Dava Sobel is an American writer of popular expositions of scientific topics. Her books include Longitude, about English clockmaker John Harrison; Galileo's Daughter, about Galileo's daughter Maria Celeste; and The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars about the Harvard Computers.