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

radically alters the character and achievements of a legendary individual whose disagreement with Catholic teaching in the seventeenth century still defines the division between science and religion.

Dava Sobel has created a biography of Galileo that is unlike any other, drawing inspiration from her long-standing curiosity with the man and the extraordinary letters that his daughter, a cloistered nun, managed to save. Galileo is known as "the father of modern physics—indeed of modern science altogether." A remarkable portrayal of a person previously lost to history is also provided by Galileo's Daughter. Her father refers to her as "a woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and most tenderly attached to me."

Galileo Gahlei (1564–1642), a musician's son, originally attempted to join a convent before developing the abilities that would make him the most prominent scientist of his day. Despite the fact that he never left Italy, his discoveries and inventions were celebrated globally. Most spectacularly, he was able to validate the incredible theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun and unveil a brand-new reality in the sky thanks to his telescopes. He was hauled before the Holy Office of the Inquisition because of this belief, charged with heresy, and had to live under house arrest for the remainder of his life.

Galileo had three illegitimate offspring; the oldest, the most intelligent, the most hardworking, and the most sensitive, grew up to be his confidante. She was born in Virginia in 1600, and at the age of thirteen, Galileo sent her to live close to him in a convent in Florence, where she was given the aptly named Suor Maria Celeste. Throughout his most fruitful and turbulent years, her father's greatest source of strength proved to be her loving support, which Galileo returned in like. Her presence adorns her father's life both then and now via letters that Sobel has skillfully translated from their original Italian and intertwined throughout the story.

Galileo's Daughter subtly recasts the character and achievements of a legendary man whose disagreement with Catholic dogma in the seventeenth century continues to characterize the division between science and religion. Sobel sheds light on the Florence of the Medicis and the papal court in Rome at the critical period when humanity's understanding of its role in the universe was being upended, alternating between Galileo's opulent public life and Maria Celeste's reclusive existence. One man tried to make sense of the discrepancies between the sky he saw through his telescope and the heavens he venerated as a devout Catholic during the same period as the bubonic plague wrecked its horrific destruction and the Thirty Years' War turned fortunes throughout Europe.

Galileo's Daughter is a remarkable tale, replete with all the human drama and scientific adventure that set Longitude apart.