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Galileo

Decisive Innovator

David Knight author Michael Sharratt author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:11th Apr '96

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Galileo cover

An entertaining, accessible biography of one of the greatest innovators ever known.

This entertaining biography examines the imagination and penetration of Galileo, path-breaker for the telescope, decoder of nature's mathematics, populariser of science, and the Inquisition's most famous victim. Accessible to non-scientists, this is the biography of one of the greatest innovators ever known.In this entertaining and authoritative biography Michael Sharratt examines the flair, imagination, hard-headedness, clarity, combativeness, and penetration of Galileo Galilei. To follow his career as he exploited unforeseen opportunities to unseat established ways of comprehending nature is to understand a crucial stage of the Scientific Revolution. Galileo was a path-breaker for the newly-invented telescope, the decoder of nature's mathematical language, and a quite brilliant populariser of science. Even his reluctant excursion into theology has at last been officially and handsomely recognised by the Church's 'rehabilitation' of the Inquisition's most famous victim, fully discussed in the last chapter. This book makes his lasting contributions accessible to non-scientists and his mistakes are not overlooked. This is not a mythical story, but the biography of an innovator - one of the greatest ever known.

'There are many other books which delve deeply and comprehensively into Galileo's life and works … but Sharratt's volume is an excellent introduction to the man aptly known as the 'father of modern physics'.' Irish Astronomical Journal

ISBN: 9780521566711

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 18mm

Weight: 430g

264 pages