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

Inspired by a long fascination with Galileo, and by the remarkable surviving letters of his daughter Maria Celeste, a cloistered nun, Dava Sobel has crafted a biography that dramatically recolors the personality and accomplishments of a mythic figure whose early-seventeenth-century clash with Catholic doctrine continues to define the schism between science and religion-the man Albert Einstein called the father of modern physics-indeed of modern science altogether. It is also a stunning portrait of Galileos daughter, a person hitherto lost to history, described by her father as a woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and most tenderly attached to me.Moving between Galileos grand public life and Maria Celestes sequestered world, Sobel illuminates the Florence of the Medicis and the papal court in Rome during the pivotal era when humanitys perception of its place in the cosmos was about to be overturned.