His first son Vincenzio (1606-1669) was born out of wedlock to his longstanding mistress Marina Gamba of Venice and eventually legitimized. GG had sister Virginia Galilei Landucci and brother Michelangelo. He was descended from the physician Galileo Buonaiuti, after whom the family had taken the name Galilei. Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa Italy in the same year as Shakespeare, 1564, of father Vincenzio Galilei and Giulia Ammannati Galilei. Overall Impression: A reasonable work and interesting for trying toĬonvey the life and times of Galileo's daughter as well as the life of the great Bracketed items are in part taken from the Encyclopedia Quotations are for the most part taken from that work, asĪre paraphrases of its commentary.

Justus Sustermans, portrait of Galileo Galilei, 1636Īcknowledgement: This work has been summarized using the 1999 Walker PublishingĮdition. (Oct.Summary by Michael McGoodwin, prepared 2000 It's a wholly involving tale, a worthy follow-up (after four years) to Sobel's surprise bestseller, Longitude. In a particularly memorable way, Sobel vivifies the hard life of the ''Poor Clares,'' who lived in such abject poverty and seclusion that many were driven mad by their confinement. With impressive skill and economy, she portrays the social and psychological forces at work in Galileo's trial, particularly the political pressures of the Thirty Years' War, and the passage of the plague through Italy, which cut off travel between Florence, where Galileo lived, and Rome, the seat of the Pope and the Inquisition, delaying Galileo's appearance there and giving his enemies time to conspire. For Sobel shows that, in renouncing his discoveries, Galileo acted not just to save his skin but also out of a genuine need to align himself with his church. But Sobel uses them as the accompaniment to, rather than the core of, her story, sounding the element of faith and piety so often missing in other retellings of Galileo's story. Her letters may not in themselves justify a book they are devout, full of pious love for the father she addresses as ''Sire,'' only rarely offering information or insight. That familiar tale is given a new slant by Sobel's translation-for the first time into English-of the 124 surviving letters to Galileo by his daughter, Suor Maria Celeste, a Clarisse nun who died at age 33 his letters to her are lost, presumably destroyed by Maria Celeste's convent after her death. Despite its title, this impressive book proves to be less the story of Galileo's elder daughter, the oldest of his three illegitimate children, and more the story of Galileo himself and his trial before the Inquisition for arguing that Earth moves around the Sun.

Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel