To see accurate pricing, please choose your delivery country.
 
 
United States
£ GBP
All Shops

British Wildlife

8 issues per year 84 pages per issue Subscription only

British Wildlife is the leading natural history magazine in the UK, providing essential reading for both enthusiast and professional naturalists and wildlife conservationists. Published eight times a year, British Wildlife bridges the gap between popular writing and scientific literature through a combination of long-form articles, regular columns and reports, book reviews and letters.

Subscriptions from £33 per year

Conservation Land Management

4 issues per year 44 pages per issue Subscription only

Conservation Land Management (CLM) is a quarterly magazine that is widely regarded as essential reading for all who are involved in land management for nature conservation, across the British Isles. CLM includes long-form articles, events listings, publication reviews, new product information and updates, reports of conferences and letters.

Subscriptions from £26 per year
Academic & Professional Books  History & Other Humanities  History of Science & Nature

Galileo

Biography / Memoir
By: John Heilbron
528 pages, 16 colour plates, 60 b/w line drawings
Galileo
Click to have a closer look
Select version
  • Galileo ISBN: 9780199655984 Paperback Jul 2012 Not in stock: Usually dispatched within 6 days
    £15.99
    #196973
  • Galileo ISBN: 9780199583522 Hardback Oct 2010 Out of Print #188368
Selected version: £15.99
About this book Contents Customer reviews Related titles

About this book

Four hundred years ago, in 1610, Galileo published the Siderius nuncius, or Starry Messenger, a 'hurried little masterpiece' in John Heilbron's words. Presenting to the world his remarkable observations using the recently invented telescope - of the craters of the moon, and the satellites of Jupiter, observations that forced changes to perceptions of the perfection of the heavens and the centrality of the Earth - the appearance of the little book is regarded as one of the greatest moments in the history of science. It was also a point of change in the life of Galileo himself, propelling him from professor to prophet. But this is not the biography of a mathematician. Certainly he spent the first half of his career as a professor of mathematics and has been called 'the divine mathematician'. Yet he was no more (or less) a mathematician than he was a musician, artist, writer, philosopher, or gadgeteer.

This fresh lively new biography of the 'father of science', planned to coincide with the 400th anniversary of publication of the Starry Messenger, paints a rounded picture of Galileo, and places him firmly within the rich texture of late Renaissance Florence, Pisa, and Padua, amid debates on the merits of Ariosto and Tasso, and the geometry of Dante's Inferno - debates in which the young Galileo played an active role. Galileo's character and career followed complex paths, moving from the creative but cautious humanist professor to a 'knight errant, quixotic and fearless', with increasing enemies, and leading ultimately and inevitably to a clash with a pope who was a former friend.

Contents

1: A Florentine Education
2: A Tuscan Archimedes
3: Life in the Serenissima
4: Galilean Science
5: Calculated Risks
6: Miscalculated Risks
7: Vainglory
8: End Games

Afterword

Customer Reviews

Biography / Memoir
By: John Heilbron
528 pages, 16 colour plates, 60 b/w line drawings
Media reviews

Heilbron's polymathic expertise brings out the complex contours of Galileo's science in a relatively accessible form [...] The most thorough and reliable introduction to Galileo now available, and also the best written
- Nick Wilding, London Review of Books

"Heilbron's book, to the best of my knowledge, explains more of Galileo's science than any other single book."
- American Scientist

"By far the richest account yet produced in English."
- Science Magazine

"Lively book."
- Mail on Sunday

"Mr Heilbron's ... has much richer scientific detail and will no doubt become the standard, comprehensive biography."
- International Herald Tribune

"Professor Heilbron provides a rounded portrait of Galileo."
- London Review of Books

"Heilbron's emphasis on Galileo's polymathy is a more accessible and undoubtedly valuable aspect of the book."
- Andrew Robinson, History Today

"As well as witticisms, Heilbron delights in scholarly details, and this book bears ample testimony to his assiduous research. [...] Witty...scholarly...innovative...Heilbron's Galileo is no ordinary eulogy."
- Patricia Fara, BBC History Magazine

"An awesome command of the vast Galileo literature... [it] will no doubt become the standard, comprehensive biography."
- Owen Gingerich, New York Times Book Review

"A masterpiece...It far surpasses all previous biographies of Galileo. Impeccable scholarship."
- Nick Jardine, professor of the History and Philosophy of Sciences, Cambridge University

Current promotions
New and Forthcoming BooksNHBS Moth TrapBritish Wildlife MagazineBuyers Guides