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Galileo
John L. Heilbron
528 pages
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60 black and white line drawings and 1 16pp plate section
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234x153mm
978-0-19-965598-4
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Paperback
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26 July 2012
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- The definitive new biography to Galileo's life and works
- Presents a fresh perspective - showing Galileo as the humanist, the musician, the natural philosopher, and the mathematician, amongst other things
- Written by a renowned historian with a lively style, who puts Galileo into a historical and cultural context
- Demonstrates the dynamic personality of one of the most significant figures in the history of science
Just over four hundred years ago, in 1610, Galileo published the Siderius nuncius, or Starry Messenger, a 'hurried little masterpiece' in John Heilbron's words. Presenting to the world his remarkable observations using the recently invented telescope - of the craters of the moon, and the satellites of Jupiter, observations that forced changes to perceptions of the perfection of the heavens and the centrality of the Earth - the appearance of the little book is regarded as one of the greatest moments in the history of science. It was also a point of change in the life of Galileo himself, propelling him from professor
to prophet.
But this is not the biography of a mathematician. Certainly he spent the first half of his career as a professor of mathematics and has been called 'the divine mathematician'. Yet he was no more (or less) a mathematician than he was a musician, artist, writer, philosopher, or gadgeteer. This fresh lively new biography of the 'father of science' paints a rounded picture of Galileo, and places him firmly within the rich texture of late Renaissance Florence, Pisa, and Padua, amid debates on the merits of Ariosto and Tasso, and the geometry of Dante's Inferno - debates in which the young Galileo played an active role.
Galileo's character and career followed complex paths, moving from the creative but cautious humanist professor to a
'knight errant, quixotic and fearless', with increasing enemies, and leading ultimately and inevitably to a clash with a pope who was a former friend.Readership: General readers and popular science readers interested in the history of science.
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John L. Heilbron, Department of History, University of California Berkeley Professor John Heilbron of the University of California at Berkeley is one of the most distinguished scholars on the Scientific Revolution. He is the author of Geometry Civilized (OUP, 1998) and The Sun in the Church (Harvard, 1999), on science and religion during the 17th century.
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"Heilbron has produced that rare marvel, a splendid new view of a familiar figure, a witty, absorbing, and convincing account of the man and his epoch, destined for the wide readership Galileo himself once had." - Eileen Reeves, ISIS
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1: A Florentine Education
2: A Tuscan Archimedes
3: Life in the Serenissima
4: Galilean Science
5: Calculated Risks
6: Miscalculated Risks
7: Vainglory
8: End Games
Afterword
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The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.
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