Dante and the early astronomer : science, adventure, and a Victorian woman who opened the heavens

Resource Information

The work Dante and the early astronomer : science, adventure, and a Victorian woman who opened the heavens represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Austin Public Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Dante and the early astronomer : science, adventure, and a Victorian woman who opened the heavens

Title remainder

science, adventure, and a Victorian woman who opened the heavens

Statement of responsibility

Tracy Daugherty

Creator

• trueDaugherty, Tracy

Author

• trueDaugherty, Tracy

Subject

• Astronomers -- England -- Biography
• Astronomy
• Astronomy -- England -- History
• Biography
• Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321
• Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321 -- Influence
• England
• Amateur astronomy
• History
• Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.)
• Women astronomers
• Women astronomers -- England -- Biography
• Evershed, Mary Acworth, 1867-1949
• Amateur astronomy -- England -- History

Genre

• trueHistory
• trueBiography

Language

eng

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.--

Assigning source

Source other than Library of Congress

Biography type

individual biography

Cataloging source

YDX

Dewey number

520.92

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

LC call number

QB36.E94

LC item number

D38 2019

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography