Galileo

John L. Heilbron

978-0-19-965598-4 | Paperback | £12.99

‘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

Galileo’s Siderius nuncius, or Starry Messenger, presented 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. Yet he was no more (or less) a mathematician than he was a musician, artist, writer, philosopher, and gadgeteer.

This fresh lively 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.