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

Sobel, Dava

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140280553 ISBN 13: 9780140280555

Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics), 2000

Synopsis

Inspired by the remarkable surviving letters of Galileo's eldest child, the cloistered nun Suor Maria Celeste, this compelling biography of the man Albert Einstein called ‘the father of modern physics—indeed of modern science altogether’ is unlike any other. Dava Sobel dramatically revives 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 being overturned and when one man sought to reconcile the Heaven he revered as a good Catholic with the heavens he revealed through his telescope.

About this title

Product Description:

Paperback by Dava Sobel-illustrated-Pub:-Penguin 2000 won LA Book Prize..Dense historical menoir with warm earnest, & solicitous writings of a loving daughter- all in 420 pages-Book condition:-like new!#4

Review:

Galileo Galilei is famous for many things: for his science (Einstein called him the "father of modern physics"); for his flamboyant style (he wrote in Italian not Latin, enlivened texts with rough humour, argued loudly in staged debates) and for his harsh treatment by the Catholic Church. What's less well known are the details of his private life--a life that, as Dava Sobel points out in Galileo's Daughter, was just as complex as the scientist's public life. Galileo had three illegitimate children; the book's title refers to the oldest, Virginia, later Suor Maria Celeste (she took the name in acknowledgement of her father's fascination with the stars). Unable to marry because of her illegitimate status, Virginia entered a convent at 13 and maintained a lifelong correspondence with her father. Sobel has translated Virginia's surviving letters for the first time and, combining those letters, commentary, and gorgeous illustrations, she sets out in Galileo's Daughter to illuminate a different side of Galileo, the father deeply committed to his daughter and to her faith.

Virginia's letters are tender, witty and intelligent. They are crammed with details of day-to-day life in Florence: "The broad beans are set out to dry and their stalks fed for breakfast to the little mule, who has become so haughty that she refuses to carry anyone." Sobel's commentaries brilliantly help to put into contextual the letters. "Most of Suor Maria Celeste's letters travelled in the pocket of a messenger or in a basket laden with laundry, sweetmeats or herbal medicines." But life in the convent was not idyllic. Virginia was surrounded by women in various states of mental collapse and her letters describing those collapses are vivid and at times terrifying. The bubonic plague, too, affected the nuns just as it did the outside world.

But what emerges most strikingly from these letters is the degree to which Virginia supported her father. Suor Maria Celeste may never have left the convent but in her letters she accompanies her father through physical and intellectual trials. We see her planning her brother's wedding (which she can't attend) and copying out her father's manuscripts. The relationship between father and daughter "is not a tale of abuse or rejection or intentional stifling of abilities", writes Sobel. "Rather, it is a love story, a tragedy and a mystery." --Simon Ings

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0140280553
• ISBN 13: 9780140280555
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432