Dante and the Early Astronomer: Science, Adventure, and a Victorian Woman Who Opened the Heavens (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780300239898)

Explore the evolution of astronomy from Dante to Einstein, as seen through the eyes of trailblazing Victorian astronomer Mary Acworth Evershed

In 1910, Mary Acworth Evershed (1867-1949) sat on a hill in southern India staring at the moon as she grappled with apparent mistakes in Dante's Divine Comedy. Was Dante's astronomy unintelligible? Or was he, for a man of his time and place, as insightful as one could be about the sky?

As the twentieth century began, women who wished to become professional astronomers faced difficult cultural barriers, but Evershed joined the British Astronomical Association and, from an Indian observatory, became an experienced observer of sunspots, solar eclipses, and variable stars. From the perspective of one remarkable amateur astronomer, readers will see how ideas developed during Galileo's time evolved or were discarded in Newtonian conceptions of the cosmos and then recast in Einstein's theories. The result is a book about the history of science but also a poetic meditation on literature, science, and the evolution of ideas.

Author: Tracy Daugherty
ISBN-10: 0300239890
ISBN-13: 9780300239898
Publisher: Yale University Press
Language: English
Published: 04/23/2019
Pages: 232
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.60w x 1.00d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 04/22/2019