Galileo's Daughter

Sobel, Dava, Galileo's Daughter (New York, 2009)

Throughout Galileo's Daughter, Dava Sobel draws on a collection of 124 letters written by Suor Maria Celeste to her father. These letters, now preserved in the National Central Library of Florence, narrate an enduring story of faith and love. Sobel uses them to reanimate a forgotten woman. By Galileo's own estimation, as well as in the opinion of his friends, she was the most important person in his life. This starts the chain of letters between the father and daughter. The only of his children to inherit his brilliance, Galileo once states that she was, "a woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and most tenderly attached to me."Galileo chose to have Suor Maria Celeste as his confidant. When, at the age of thirty-three, Maria Celeste met her untimely death from dysentery, Galileo wrote to a friend, "I feel immense sadness and melancholy...and continually hear my beloved daughter calling to me."

The authors purpose of writing this book is to inform the readers of not only the relationship between Galileo and Maria, but also to show Maria's genuine interest in her father's scientific work, sometimes even offering her own opinion on issues. Her letters to her father, lovingly preserved by him, the margins sometimes marked with Galileo's notes, calculations, and diagrams, bear witness to the powerful emotional and intellectual bond between father and daughter. Her letters, many of which are published here for the first time, not only illuminate the

human side of this scientific genius but also convey the texture of Renaissance Italy with remarkable immediacy.

In the introduction of the book Dava Sobel states that she translated the letters from Italian to English herself, proving that she had at least the qualifications to Dava Sobel graduated from The Bronx High School of Science and Binghamton University. Sobel first became successful when she began teaching at the University of Chicago as the Vare Writer-in-Residence in the winter of 2006. She taught a one-quarter seminar on writing about science. She served as a judge for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award in 2012. She holds honorary doctor of letters degrees