Dava Sobel

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Dava Sobel in November 2007 during an event at Yale University

Dava Sobel (born June 15, 1947 in the Bronx , New York City ) is an American writer .

Life

Sobel attended the Bronx High School of Science and graduated from Binghamton University . She works as a science editor for the New York Times and is known in Europe for her popular science books. She has published numerous articles in magazines such as Harvard Magazine , Life and The New Yorker . Dava Sobel lives in New York City.

Galileo's daughter describes the relationship between Galileo Galilei and his daughter Celeste, who lived in a monastery. The surviving letters from father and daughter document the contradictions between science and religion. For this book she was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize .

Longitude describes the story of the watchmaker John Harrison (1693–1776), who had set himself the goal of constructing a watch that was sufficiently accurate at sea. Although he succeeded in revolutionizing the determination of length at sea and thereby solving the problem of length , as a non-scientist he had to fight for a long time to be awarded the Academy Prize. The book was filmed for television in 1999 with Michael Gambon and Jeremy Irons .

Sobel's third book, The Planets , pays homage to the bodies of the solar system , their great diversity and their respective mythology. Poetic aspects such as beauty, music of the spheres or genesis are interwoven with little-known physical and historical facts, mixed with autobiographical elements and the experience of early space travel .

The asteroid (30935) Davasobel was named after the writer in 2005.

Works

  • Galileo's Daughter, A History of Science, the Stars and Love (Orig. 1999 udT Galileo's Daughter. A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love) German Berlin: Berlin Verlag, 1999. ISBN 3-442-72296-9 .
  • Longitude . The true story of a lonely genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time. 1st edition. Bloomsbury Taschenbuch Verlag, 2005, ISBN 978-3-8333-0271-8 (English: Longitude . Translated by Matthias Fienbork).
  • The Planets (English 2005, German 2005 published by Berlin Verlag, paperback edition July 2007 published by Berliner Taschenbuch Verlag; with a recent epilogue on the downgrading of Pluto to a dwarf planet). ISBN 3-8270-0267-2 .
  • And the sun stood still: how Copernicus revolutionized our worldview . Berlin Verlag 2012. ISBN 3-8270-0894-8 .
  • The glass universe: how women discovered the stars . Berlin Verlag 2017. ISBN 3827012147 .
  • Signals from other worlds: The scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence . (with Frank Drake ). Rittersdorf, Essen 1994, ISBN 3-88498-065-3 .

literature

  • Felix Lühning: Longitude. Critical consideration of a bestseller. In: Contributions to the history of astronomy. Volume 10. Frankfurt a. M. 2010, pp. 104-186.

Web links

Commons : Dava Sobel  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Sobel, Dava
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer and science editor
DATE OF BIRTH June 15, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City