'Crush' on Galileo inspired historical memoir

NEW YORK -- For years, author Dava Sobel had been infatuated with the wrong man.

Galileo Galilei, she thought, embodied the highest scientific ideals -- objectivity and levelheadedness -- in his single-minded quest to untangle the mysteries of the heavens and Earth.

Then Sobel discovered he had a daughter.

"I was dumbstruck by the whole thing because Galileo to me had been something like a marble bust and never really had children," the author said. "And here was his daughter ... (who) was a nun, which is truly incredible because Galileo -- or so I had thought -- was the great enemy of the Catholic church, someone who had left religion and superstition behind him to pursue a cool, scientific, levelheaded advance through the cosmos."

Sobel paused for a breath, her hazel eyes intense.

"That it made me think that everything I knew about Galileo was wrong, and that he was perhaps even religious -- that was very startling to me," said Sobel, a former science writer for The New York Times.

"I had a major crush on Galileo always -- but for the wrong reasons. What I knew about him was a myth."

The shattered illusion provided the inspiration for her most recent book, "Galileo's Daughter," which chronicles the life of the inventor and his extraordinary correspondence with Virginia, the eldest of his three out-of-wedlock children, who was placed in a convent when she was 13.

Suor Maria Celeste, as she was later known, became Galileo's confidante and remained loyal through his most tumultuous years, including his trial before the Holy Office of the Inquisition for his heretical belief that the Earth moved around the sun.

"She was such a good person, such a long-suffering but dear, wise, funny character. I just was crazy about her," Sobel said.

"I don't know anybody who's read her letters who doesn't feel that way. And I felt such a closeness to her which I could not explain because what could I possibly have in common with an Italian nun who lived 400 years ago?"

The letters -- both in English and Italian -- will be released in October as a companion book to the novel.

All 124 letters were translated by Sobel, who was forced to brush up her college-level Italian. She traveled to Florence where she managed to view the originals -- textured, yellowed parchment complete with holes, tears, sealing wax and spills -- which were bound together in a book.

"I just had to let it sit there for a few minutes. I couldn't even touch it. Then you hold them and you realize who touched them, who held them first. ..." She trailed off with a still-amazed laugh.

It wasn't until she was well into writing "Galileo's Daughter," subtitled, "A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love," that she realized why the father-daughter correspondence was particularly significant.

"I remembered that when my father died in 1992 ... I had been helping my mother to go through his personal belongings and I wanted something of his that I could just keep -- something small," Sobel recalled.

"So I went through the top drawer in his dresser and the only thing in there was a letter from me that I had written him 20 years previously that he had saved all that time. So, obviously, that's what got me emotionally stirred by the story."

The book, which was a finalist for last year's Pulitzer Prize in biography, took five years to research, write and edit.

"When it was over, I really felt depressed. It was unusual for me. I have two children but this was my first postpartum depression," said Sobel, who usually begins writing around 4 a.m.

Sobel grew up in the Bronx, the daughter of a physician father and a mother who trained in chemistry.

"I've always been interested in science. My family was interested so it was around me and wasn't presented as something foreign or difficult," said Sobel, who attended the prestigious Bronx High School of Science.

Among her strongest influences are Carl Sagan, for whom she worked as a consultant on his "Cosmos" series. She has been a contributing editor to Harvard Magazine, writing about scientific research and the history of science.

Sobel is also a ballroom dancer in her spare time. She was at a competition in Miami when her last book, "Longitude," about how 18th-century scientist and clock maker John Harrison determined the east-west location at sea, was reviewed in the Times.

"It was so wonderful to get that review. Of course, I got (my publisher) to read it again.

"The next day I had another competition ... I was so nervous but I remember saying to myself, 'This is not my real life. In my real life, I'm a writer and I just got a rave review in The New York Times -- a dream of 200 lifetimes.' And so I was perfectly calm and we did take first place."

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