Research Catalog
Dante and the early astronomer : science, adventure, and a Victorian woman who opened the heavens
- Title
- Dante and the early astronomer : science, adventure, and a Victorian woman who opened the heavens / Tracy Daugherty.
- Author
- Daugherty, Tracy Edgar, 1944-
- Publication
- New Haven ; London : Yale University Press, [2019]
- ©2019
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1 Item
| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person. | Text | Use in library | JFD 19-4128 | Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315 |
Details
- Description
- xvi, 214 pages : illustrations; 22 cm
- Summary
- 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 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.
- Subjects
- Astronomy
- Amateur astronomy
- Women astronomers
- Astronomers
- Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321
- Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.)
- Astronomy > England > History
- History
- Biographies
- Amateur astronomy > England > History
- Women astronomers > England > Biography
- Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321 > Influence
- Evershed, Mary Acworth, 1867-1949
- England
- Astronomers > England > Biography
- Genre/Form
- Biographies.
- History.
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 199-206) and index.
- Contents
- Preface: The dawn-light of Ravenna -- On the hilltop -- To the lighthouse -- The city of stars -- Poetry and sunspots -- "Black star-lore" -- Physical astronomy -- Romantics -- Prisms -- The notebook of the sun -- The gift of the forest -- The scarcity of wasps in Kashmir -- Harmonic structures -- "Dante and the early astronomers" -- Sun-chasers -- Exploding the sun -- Saturnalia -- Infinity and the fly -- Wallal -- Departure -- Who's who in the moon -- The Maunder minimum -- The remade universe -- Return to origins -- Northern lights -- Epilogue: Kodai dusk.
- Call Number
- JFD 19-4128
- ISBN
- 9780300239898
- 0300239890
- LCCN
- 2018959330
- OCLC
- 1053572057
- Author
- Daugherty, Tracy Edgar, 1944- author.
- Title
- Dante and the early astronomer : science, adventure, and a Victorian woman who opened the heavens / Tracy Daugherty.
- Publisher
- New Haven ; London : Yale University Press, [2019]
- Copyright Date
- ©2019
- Type of Content
- text
- Type of Medium
- unmediated
- Type of Carrier
- volume
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 199-206) and index.
- Research Call Number
- JFD 19-4128