CANR
WORK TITLE: The Elements of Marie Curie
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WEBSITE: http://www.davasobel.com/
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NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: LRC 2017
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born June 15, 1947, in New York, NY; daughter of Samuel H. (a physician) and Betty (a chemist) Sobel; married Arthur C. Klein (an author; divorced, December 14, 1995); children: Zoe Rachel, Isaac.
EDUCATION:Attended Antioch College; graduated from State University of New York–Binghamton, 1969.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, journalist, science writer, technical writer, reviewer, editor, lecturer, and educator. Worked as a technical writer for IBM; New York Times, New York, NY, science reporter, 1979-82; Cornell University News Bureau, science writer; astronomy columnist for the East Hampton Independent, East Hampton, NY, beginning 1994, and for Discovery Channel Online, beginning 1996; columnist, Travel Holiday. University of Chicago, Vare Nonfiction Writer-in-Residence, 2006; Mary Baldwin College, Staunton, VA, Elizabeth Kirkpatrick Doenges Visiting Artist/Scholar and instructor in science writing, 2011; Smith College, Northampton, MA, Joan Lieman Jacobson Visiting Nonfiction Writer, 2013-16.
Lecturer at scientific meetings, museums, and technical organizations, including the Smithsonian Institution, Goddard Spaceflight Center, Folger Shakespeare Library, Hayden Planetarium, U.S. Naval Observatory, New York Public Library, the American Academy (Rome, Italy), and the Royal Institution (London, England). Guest on television and radio programs, including All Things Considered, Science Friday, Fresh Air, and the Diane Rehm Show. Served on the Planet Definition Committee, International Astronomical Union.
AVOCATIONS:Ballroom dancing, amateur astronomy.
MEMBER:Planetary Society, National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors, American Association of University Women.
AWARDS:American Psychological Foundation National Media Award, 1980; Lowell Thomas Award from Society of American Travel Writers, 1992; gold medal, Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), 1994, for an article on longitude published in Harvard; Los Angeles Times Book Award for Science and Technology, 1999, Christopher Award, 2000, and Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography finalist, 2000, all for Galileo’s Daughter; Bradford Washburn Award, Boston Museum of Science, 2001; Individual Public Service Award, National Science Board, 2001; honorary doctor of letters degrees, University of Bath, England, and Middlebury College, Vermont, both 2002; Harrison Medal, Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, 2004; Klumpke-Roberts Award, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2008; Cultural Award, Eduard Rhein Foundation, 2014; named Fellow of the American Physical Society, 2022.
POLITICS: Democrat. RELIGION: Jewish.WRITINGS
Scientific American, “Meter” (poetry column) editor. Author of forewords to Cosmos, by Giles Sparrow, Quercus (New York, NY), 2013; and Conversations with Galileo: A Fictional Dialogue Based on Biographical Facts, by William Shea, Watkins (London, England), 2019. Contributor of articles to periodicals, including Astronomy, Audubon, Discover, Harvard, Ladies Home Journal, Life, New York Times Magazine, New Yorker, New Woman, Omni, Redbook, Vogue, Science Digest, and Working Woman.
Longitude was adapted for television by Charles Sturridge and Granada Film, A&E Network, 1999, and served as the basis of the PBS NOVA documentary “Lost at Sea—The Search for Latitude;” Galileo’s Daughter served as the inspiration for a NOVA documentary titled “Galileo’s Battle for the Heavens,” 2002, and for a play written by Timberlake Wertenbake and Sir Peter Hall, premiering in Bath, England, 2004; Longitude was adapted as a play by Arnold Wesker, Amber Lane Press (Charlbury, England), 2006.
SIDELIGHTS
Former New York Times science reporter Dava Sobel has earned great critical recognition for her scientific history books. [open new]Raised in New York City, she attended the Bronx School of Science—at which time she started reading Scientific American regularly—before bouncing between a few colleges and becoming a journalist. In her books, invoking figures ranging from Copernicus and Galileo to Marie Curie, she explores momentous achivements while also delving into personal experiences from underappreciated and oft-feminist angles.[suspend new]
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time and Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love are both highly unusual books that became international best sellers. Longitude is the true story of the quest to devise a reliable navigational instrument for sailors; Galileo’s Daughter creates a unique portrait of the famous astronomer Galileo Galilei, using letters from his cloistered daughter as its foundation. On the strength of these two books, Entertainment Weekly contributor Gillian Flynn praised Sobel as “a writer who has reached through the brambled, layered detritus of hundreds of years, retrieved a forgotten clock maker and a lost daughter, and gently restored these strangers to all their joyful, proud, petulant, toothachy genuineness.”
Described as an “elegant history” by New York Times critic Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, Longitude is the story of an eighteenth-century clockmaker’s persistence in developing a seaworthy clock by which sailors might determine longitude—points east or west on the earth. Throughout history, without a tool or method for determining their positions, many sailors veered off-course. This at best delayed their deliveries of goods and frequently led to ships running aground on various hazards and sinking. In 1714, Sobel relates, England’s parliament addressed the dire problem by promising a reward of 20,000 pounds (the equivalent of millions of dollars by modern standards) to anyone who could solve the problem of determining longitude. Scientists knew that every hour’s time difference between a ship and its destination (or port of origin) equaled a change in longitude of fifteen degrees east or west; the solution, therefore, was to create an instrument that would withstand the erratic changes in climate and humidity aboard a ship so that sailors could determine their position by the time.
John Harrison, a self-educated clockmaker, accepted the challenge, devoting some forty-six years of his life to the building of weatherproof and motion-proof clocks. His effort produced the chronometer and earned admiration and a monetary prize from King George III. Sobel relates many of the obstacles that Harrison had to overcome to create a working sea clock, along with often amusing stories of solutions offered by others to the longitude problem. In addition, Longitude, according to John Ellsworth in the New York Times Book Review, “captures John Harrison’s extraordinary character: brilliant, persevering and heroic in the face of adversity. He is a man you won’t forget.”
Longitude elicited further praise from critics, including Lehmann-Haupt, who lauded Sobel’s “remarkable ability to tell a story with clarity and perfect pacing.” Touched by Sobel’s account of being reduced to tears upon visiting the maritime museum that houses Harrison’s clocks, Lehmann-Haupt wrote: “Such is the eloquence of this gem of a book that it makes you understand exactly how she felt.” Bruno Maddox expressed similar sentiments in his Washington Post Book World review: “Longitude is a simple tale, brilliantly told,” Maddox wrote. “Perhaps one of the most impressive things about the book—given its subject matter—is the sheer simplicity of the whole thing. … She offers us no attack on the modern assumption that time is solid and objective; she wholly refrains from rubbing readers’ noses in the artificiality of meaning, etc.; she offers us nothing, in short, but measured, nearly perfect prose and a magnificent story, an extraordinary book.” Longitude spent forty weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and sold more than a million copies.
While researching Longitude, Sobel came across a letter written to the seventeenth-century astronomer Galileo—who supported Nicholas Copernicus’s revolutionary theory that the earth moved around the sun instead of vice versa—from his daughter. She was surprised to know that he had a child at all; further investigation revealed that he had three illegitimate offspring. His two daughters, deemed unmarriageable due to their illegitimacy, had been placed in a convent during their teenage years. The elder of the pair, who took the name Sister Maria Celeste, was a truly remarkable woman who served as an herbalist and accountant to the convent. Hundreds of letters to her father showed her great intelligence and devotion to her father, who returned her affection.
“Retelling the story of Galileo’s famous battle with the Inquisition over geocentricism, [Sobel] brings it to life by concentrating on the everyday—his professional feuds, his own sincere religious beliefs and—most important—his intense relationship with his eldest daughter,” noted Malcolm Jones in Newsweek, who deemed the book as portraying “an epic battle over our place in the cosmos.” It is well known that Galileo’s theories put him in opposition to the Roman Catholic Church; the Court of the Inquisition forced him to recant, but he cleverly succeeded in setting down his works for posterity by recasting them as a fictional dialogue. He is frequently portrayed as a defiant figure, “a scientific Martin Luther,” in the words of Library Journal contributor Wilda Williams, but that image is incorrect. He was a true believer who experienced a real crisis within himself over the conflict between his work and the authority of the Church. Williams quoted Sobel as saying, “Galileo remained a good Catholic to his dying day. His scientific discoveries actually strengthened his faith.”
Sobel has stated that as a Jew raised in the Bronx, she had a difficult time understanding the religious world of her story—particularly Maria Celeste’s life as a member of the Poor Clares, a Franciscan order dedicated to poverty and seclusion. A rich correspondence with the mother abbess of a contemporary Poor Clares convent was so enlightening to her that she told Williams: “I could now understand why even today a young woman would enter a convent and live in poverty.” Many reviewers credit Galileo’s Daughter with providing a fascinating look into this kind of life, as well as providing a wonderful portrait of Galileo, his family, and his world. It is a “creative and compelling work” that reveals Sobel’s “technical insight and originality,” according to Hilary Burton in Library Journal. The author “has a remarkable ability to explain technical subjects without being simplistic or pedantic. There is a tremendous amount of fascinating detail in this work, and yet it reads as smoothly and compellingly as fiction.”
Reading Sister Maria Celeste’s letters so inspired Sobel that she translated all 124 surviving letters that the woman wrote to Galileo and published them, in a bilingual edition, as Letters to Father: Suor Maria Celeste to Galileo, 1623-1633. “Her letters show that, despite her cloistered and pious existence, she was exceptionally well-informed and open-minded,” Jennifer Birriel commented in Astronomy. Sister Maria Celeste took responsibility for many of Galileo’s domestic needs—mending and bleaching his shirts and collars, making cakes and candies for him—and much of their communication is about such “extremely mundane, domestic matters,” Franco Mormando wrote in America. Yet “precisely because of their humble, domestic, utterly private nature, the letters help give true flesh and blood, an enlivening third dimension, to historical personages that more exalted, formal documentation—published treatises, papal bulls, inquisitorial reports—cannot supply.
”The letters also reveal Galileo’s privileged place in society. Sister Maria Celeste frequently asked him for help in dealing with various problems around the convent, some of which required money and some which required favors from the authorities, and the evidence suggests that Galileo was always able and willing to assist the sisters. Sobel and her publisher donated all profits from the book to a Poor Clares convent in Roswell, New Mexico.
In 2005, Sobel published The Planets, in which she presents a collection of meditations on the planets that make up our solar system. In the essays, Sobel introduces each planet from a different point of view. Aside from being scientific, Sobel’s tour of the solar system is both historical, recounting the discovery of the planets, and cultural, taking readers through science fiction, mythology, astrology, literature, music, and popular culture. Her imaginative treatment includes fictional letters. “A thoughtful, apt diction permeates Sebel’s journey among the planets, creating a mood of reading pleasure,” remarked Gilbert Taylor in Booklist. Sandy Freund wrote in School Library Journal: “The writing is clear and elegant, almost lyrical at times, and the research is thorough.”
In A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos, Sobel combined two genres—a stage play and narrative nonfiction—to tell the story of how astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus came to publicize his theory that the sun was the center of the universe, having refused to do so for three decades after devising it around 1510. He was persuaded—no one knows precisely how—to publish his potentially heretical theory by a mysterious Lutheran mathematician named Minus Rheticus, who showed up at Copernicus’s door in Catholic territory in 1539, a dangerous move during the Reformation.
“I was struck by the contrast between Copernicus and the young man who convinced him to publish his book,” Sobel told Brian Ventrudo in an interview for One-Minute Astronomer. “Their interaction, despite their differences of age and religion in a time of religious upheaval, appealed to me as the basis of a stage play.”
Reviewers made much of Sobel’s unusual structure. “Although it feels as tonally off-kilter as a Ptolemaic orrery, the play does allow Sobel to give the rather dry material some narrative oomph,” remarked Helen Brown in a review for the London Telegraph. “Theater turns out to be a good medium for probing the scientific controversies,” noted Sam Kean in a review for the New York Times Book Review. Kean further pointed out that the narrative, in which Sobel lays out the evidence for her version of events, enables the author to avoid the question of what is fact versus fiction in the drama. Edward T. Oakes, writing in First Things, felt that “the core of the book … is truly odd.”
Kean, on the other hand, concluded: “No one knows what argument or plea or even taunt made Copernicus face himself and say, I must publish. But Sobel supplies a plausible, and stirring, version of his transformation.” Mike Brown, reviewing the book in the Washington Post Book World, called A More Perfect Heaven “a delightful immersion into tumultuous times.”
Sobel is also the author, with her former husband Arthur C. Klein, of several books on back pain and arthritis, including 1989’s Arthritis: What Works. Based on the authors’ interviews with more than 1,000 arthritis sufferers, Arthritis: What Works discusses various methods of treatment that patients report have alleviated their pain, from traditional therapy offered by physicians and drugs, to less conventional treatments used by holistic healers. In addition, the authors share recipes and diet plans considered to be helpful in attacking arthritis through nutrition. A companion of sorts to Arthritis: What Works is Arthritis: What Exercises Work, in which Sobel and Klein describe and illustrate exercises that were reported by the arthritis sufferers they interviewed to relieve symptoms of arthritis.
The authors issued a similar book, Backache: What Exercises Work, after speaking with some 500 sufferers of back injury about activities that eased their pain and hastened their return to normal activity.
Sobel wrote the play And the Sun Stood Still, which was performed by the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company in Colorado in early 2014 and published two years later. A radio play version has been recorded and distributed by L.A. Theatre Works. An examination of science versus religion, the play imagines the details of the real encounter between Catholic astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus and Lutheran German mathematician Georg Joachim Rheticus in 1539. Copernicus believed he could prove that the Sun, not the Earth, was the center of the universe but kept his papers hidden for fear of the Catholic Church’s wrath. Rheticus visited Copernicus in Poland for several months as he convinced the astronomer to reveal his findings to the public. The result was On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres published in 1543, a document that changed the course of human understanding and man’s place in the world.
Calling Sobel a “gifted teller of scientific tales,” Denver Post contributor Lisa Kennedy interviewed Sobel on her choice of topic for the play. “It was an idea I had years ago, in 1973, when I was writing on the 500th anniversary of Nicolaus Copernicus’ birth,” said Sobel, who was attracted to the relationship between the two men. Initially dropping the idea, Sobel picked it up many years later. As her publisher suggested she write the Copernicus book as a play, Sobel researched how to write plays and dialogue intensive scenes. “At its heart—and the most successful element of both the script and the production—are the conversations between Rheticus and Copernicus,” according to Juliet Wittman on the Westword Web site. “Sobel’s elegant language and profound imagining make the audaciousness and majesty of Copernicus’s thought so clear you can almost feel the earth shifting under your own feet,” added Wittman.
Sobel next wrote The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars, which highlights the mid-nineteenth century “human computers” at Harvard, women who scanned glass photographic plates, performed calculations, and interpreted the observations of the male astronomers. The women at first were the wives and sisters of the astronomers, then later were recruited from women’s colleges like Vassar and Wellesley. Sobel focuses on noteworthy women, such as Williamina Fleming, Antonia Maury, Henrietta Leavitt, Annie Jump Cannon, and Cecilia Payne. Women like these made important discoveries including star composition and motion, categories of stars, and ways to measure distances between stars by starlight. “Sobel knows how to tell an engaging story, and this one flows smoothly, with just enough explication of the science,” according to a writer in Publishers Weekly.
Colleen Mondor commented in Booklist: “The Glass Universe is a feast for those eager to absorb forgotten stories of resolute American women who expanded human knowledge.” Although the Observatory paid women far less than their male counterparts, and the men were more likely to gain notoriety than the women who did the complex calculations, “Sobel defends the observatory from charges of outright misogyny, arguing that at least women got to do science. Indeed, every year new applicants offered to work there for free, since no other institution would consider them,” explained American Scholar contributor Sam Kean.
For the book, Sobel researched letters and archives of the women astronomers and their benefactors, two of which were the heiresses Anna Palmer Draper and Catherine Wolfe Bruce. A writer in The Economist declared: “Ms. Sobel has drawn deeply from her sources, knitting together the lives and work of the women of Harvard Observatory into a peerless intellectual biography.” According to an interviewer in New York Times Book Review, Sobel “says that while researching her new book, ‘The Glass Universe,’ she read fiction about the time period, such as The Custom of the Country and O Pioneers!”
[resume new]Sobel turns to a shining figure in the history of radiology with The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science. Framed around the figurative rays represented by forty-five rising female scientists who worked in Curie’s lab at the Sorbonne, the book offers a biographical treatment of Curie that serves as the source from which those rays stretched forth. Born Marya Salomea Slodowska and raised in Warsaw, the future scientist benefited from the encouragement of her father, a high-school math teacher with progressive views on women’s education. With the Sorbonne in Paris admitting women, Marya, now Marie, enrolled and focused her studies on physics. Two years of study found her leading her class, commencing doctoral studies, and meeting Pierre Curie, who always credited her contributions to their joint work, even as much of the male-dominated scientific world overlooked her genius. Pierre’s untimely death by horse-drawn wagon left Marie to pick up the pieces and take over their studies. Her devotion to advancing knowledge of radioactivity—and braving exposure to it—led to periods of illness and absence from her Sorbonne lab and ultimately to her death as a veritable martyr of science. As of Sobel’s writing, Curie remained the only winner of a Nobel Prize in two categories, physics (1903) and chemistry (1911). The careers of Curie’s protégés proceeded at variable rates; many found the male-dominated scientific establishment inhospitable, if not discriminatory, while a few achieved renown. Ellen Gleditsch learned the half-life of radium, while Marguerite Perey discovered francium.
In the New York Times Book Review, Kate Zernike affirmed that Sobel “writes elegantly about science, unspooling Curie’s pursuits in the lab like a mystery.” Zernike lamented that Sobel “sets out to show how Curie’s discovery of radium ‘lit a path for women in science,’ … but her telling confirms, heartbreakingly at times, just how narrow and gloomy the path was.” A Kirkus Reviews writer praised The Elements of Marie Curie as an “admiring … lucid, literate biography, celebrating a scientific exemplar who, for all her fame, deserves to be better known.”[close new]
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
America, May 6, 2002, Franco Mormando, review of Letters to Father: Suor Maria Celeste to Galileo, 1623-1633, p. 30.
American Scientist, March, 2000, review of Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love, p. 173.
American Scholar, winter, 2017, Sam Kean, “Sisters of the Night: The Pioneering Female Scientists Who First Charted the Universe,” review of The Glass Universe, p. 121.
Analog: Science Fiction and Fact, September, 1993, Tom Easton, review of Is Anyone Out There? The Scientific Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, p. 165.
Astronomy, June, 1993, Dave Bruning, review of Is Anyone Out There?, p. 92; December, 1995, review of Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, p. 103; March, 2000, review of Galileo’s Daughter, p. 103; October, 2002, Jennifer Birriel, review of Letters to Father, p. 88.
Beaver: Exploring Canada’s History, August-September, 1999, Thomas Sinclair, review of Longitude, p. 44.
Booklist, September 1, 1995, Gilbert Taylore, review of Longitude, p. 23; August, 1999, Gilbert Taylor, review of Galileo’s Daughter, p. 1983; March 15, 2000, Whitney Scott, review of Galileo’s Daughter, p. 1397; December 1, 2000, Karen Harris, review of Galileo’s Daughter, p. 741; October 15, 2001, Gilbert Taylor, review of Letters to Father, p. 363; August 1, 2011, Gilbert Taylor, review of A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos, p. 10; September 15, 2016, Colleen Mondor, review of The Glass Universe, p. 7.
BookPage, December, 2016, Deborah Hopkinson, review of The Glass Universe, p. 43.
Books and Culture, May, 2001, Virginia Stem Owens, review of Galileo’s Daughter, p. 36.
Choice, May, 2012, review of A More Perfect Heaven, p. 1672.
Cross Currents, winter, 2000, John Daretta, review of Galileo’s Daughter, p. 574.
Denver Post, March 26, 2014, Lisa Kennedy, “And the Sun Stood Still: Dava Sobel’s Copernicus Takes the Stage in Boulder,” theater review of And the Sun Stood Still.
Discover, December, 1999, Josie Glausiusz, review of Galileo’s Daughter, p. 116.
Economist, October 19, 1996, review of Longitude, p. S13; November 13, 1999, “Heroes of Modern Science: Loyal Child,” review of Galileo’s Daughter, p. 9; September 24, 2011, review of A More Perfect Heaven, p. 106; December 24, 2016, “A Secret History; Astronomy,” review of The Glass Universe, p. 114.
Entertainment Weekly, December 11, 1998, David Hochman, review of The Illustrated Longitude, p. 71; November 19, 1999, Gillian Flynn, review of Galileo’s Daughter, p. 91.
First Things, March, 2000, Elizabeth Powers, review of Galileo’s Daughter, p. 76; December, 2011, Edward T. Oakes, review of A More Perfect Heaven, p. 66.
Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy, fall, 2000, Joshua A. Chamot, review of Galileo’s Daughter, p. 107.
Geographical, November, 1996, Claire Hutchings, review of Longitude, p. 58; May, 2000, review of The Illustrated Longitude, p. 93.
Hindu, May 16, 2000, review of Longitude.
Investigate, December, 2011, Peter M. Gianotti, review of A More Perfect Heaven, p. 87.
Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2001, review of Letters to Father, p. 1337; October 15, 2016, review of The Glass Universe; October 15, 2024, review of The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science.
Kliatt, November, 2003, Jacqueline Edwards, audiobook review of Galileo’s Daughter, p. 55; May, 2004, Karen Reeds, review of The Illustrated Longitude, p. 42.
Library Journal, February 15, 1985, Laura Claggett, review of Backache Relief: The Ultimate Second Opinion from Back-Pain Sufferers Nationwide Who Share Their Successful Healing Experiences, p. 175; August, 1989, Frances Groen, review of Arthritis: What Works, p. 156; October 1, 1992, Gary D. Barber, review of Is Anyone Out There?, p. 113; November 15, 1993, Loraine F. Sweetland, review of Arthritis: What Exercises Work, p. 94; September 15, 1995, James Olson, review of Longitude, p. 90; August, 1996, Carolyn Alexander, audiobook review of Longitude, p. 136; February 1, 1999, Michael Rogers, review of The Illustrated Longitude, p. 126; October 1, 1999, Wilda Williams, “A Father of Science, A Daughter of God,” p. 128, Hilary Burton, review of Galileo’s Daughter, p. 131; October 1, 2001, Hilary Burton, review of Letters to Father, p. 137; October 15, 2016, Faye Chedwell, review of The Glass Universe, p. 107.
Mercator’s World, November, 1999, Cheri Brooks, review of The Illustrated Longitude, p. 54.
Natural Health, May-June, 1996, Kurt Tidmore, review of Arthritis: What Exercises Work, pp. 122-123.
New Scientist, September 24, 2011, Jonathon Keats, review of A More Perfect Heaven, p. 61.
New Statesman, August 9, 1996, Boyd Tonkin, review of Longitude, p. 45.
Newsweek, October 11, 1999, Malcolm Jones, “When the Earth Moved: Dava Sobel Pairs Galileo’s Story with His Daughter’s to Give Us Seventeenth-Century Italian Life in the Round,” review of Galileo’s Daughter, p. 83.
New York Times, November 2, 1995, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of Longitude, p. C21.
New York Times Book Review, October 11, 1992, Anthony Aveni, review of Is Anyone Out There?, p. 18; November 26, 1995, John Ellsworth, review of Longitude, p. 15; January 8, 2012, Sam Kean, review of A More Perfect Heaven, p. 21; December 11, 2016, interview with Dava Sobel, p. 10; October 27, 2024, Kate Zernike, review of The Elements of Marie Curie, p. 13.
New York Times Magazine, December 19, 1982, Josef H. Weissberg, “Short-Term Psychotherapy,” p. 110.
Observer (London, England), September 18, 2005, Robin McKie, review of The Planets.
Public Opinion Quarterly, spring, 1989, Howard Schuman, review of Backache Relief, p. 149.
Publishers Weekly, August 18, 1989, Molly McQuade, review of Arthritis: What Works, p. 60; September 7, 1992, review of Is Anyone Out There?, p. 89; June 27, 1994, review of Backache: What Exercises Work, p. 74; September 18, 1995, review of Longitude, p. 119; February 5, 1996, Paul Nathan, “Not in Our Stars,” p. 24; July 19, 1999, review of Galileo’s Daughter, p. 170; October 4, 1999, John F. Baker, “Dava Sobel: Matters of Science and Faith,” p. 48; November 1, 1999, Daisy Maryles, “A Scientific Find,” p. 24; November 29, 1999, Daisy Maryles, “A Father’s Pride,” p. 30; August 27, 2001, review of Letters to Father, p. 63; June 14, 2004, review of The Best American Science Writing 2004, p. 52; October 3, 2016, review of The Glass Universe, p. 110; August 12, 2024, review of The Elements of Marie Curie, p. 55.
Quadrant, April, 2000, Peter Slezak, review of Galileo’s Daughter, p. 75.
School Library Journal, February, 1996, Judy McAloon, review of Longitude, p. 135.
Science, November 6, 1992, Ronald N. Bracewell, review of Is Anyone Out There?, p. 1012; October 8, 1999, review of The Illustrated Longitude, p. 248.
Science News, October 1, 2005, review of The Planets, p. 223; October 22, 2011, Nadia Drake, review of A More Perfect Heaven, p. 30; December 10, 2016, Macon Morehouse, “Astronomy’s Unsung Heroines Get Their Due,” review of The Glass Universe, p. 28.
Scientific American, January, 1993, Philip Morrison, review of Is Anyone Out There?, p. 155.
Skeptical Inquirer, May, 2000, James C. Sullivan, review of Galileo’s Daughter, p. 51.
Sky & Telescope, December, 1992, Frank White, review of Is Anyone Out There?, p. 650; July, 1996, Roger W. Sinnott, review of Longitude, p. 60.
Spectator, January 14, 2017, Marek Kukula, “An Astronomical Feat,” review of The Glass Universe, p. 30.
Sunday Times, December 26, 1999, “Lucky Timing from the First Lady of Longitude,” p. 11; September 4, 2011, James McConnachie, review of A More Perfect Heaven, p. 51.
Systems Research and Behavioral Science, January, 2001, John P. van Gigch, review of Galileo’s Daughter, p. 91.
Telegraph (London, England), October 11, 2011, Helen Brown, review of A More Perfect Heaven.
Time, November 15, 1999, R.Z. Sheppard, “Footsteps No Longer: As Women’s History Takes Root in the Canon, More Stories about the Past Take on a Female Voice,” p. 108.
Ubique, September, 2011, Peter Lewis, review of A More Perfect Heaven, p. 7.
USA Today, December 20, 2016, Matt Damsker, review of The Glass Universe, p. 03D.
Washington Monthly, January-February, 1996, Gregg Easterbrook, review of Longitude, p. 53.
Washington Post Book World, November 26, 1995, review of Longitude, p. 2; October 15, 2011, Mike Brown, review of A More Perfect Heaven.
World and I, April, 2000, Sara Schechner, review of Galileo’s Daughter, p. 262.
ONLINE
Dan’s Papers, https://www.danspapers.com/ (February 25, 2020), Karen Fredericks, “Dava Sobel: A Well-Versed Woman.”
Dava Sobel website, https://www.davasobel.com (February 13, 2025).
Galileo’s Daughter website, http://www.galileosdaughter.com (August 13, 2004).
National Public Radio website, http://www.npr.com/ (December 4, 2016), Heller McAlpin, “Women Astronomers Shine in The Glass Universe,” review of The Glass Universe.
One-Minute Astronomer, http://www.oneminuteastronomer.com/ (November 7, 2011), Brian Ventrudo, interview with Sobel.
Readers Club of America, http://www.readersclubofamerica.com/ (February 20, 2017), interview with Dava Sobel.
Science News, http://www.sciencenews.org/ (October 22, 2011), Nadia Drake, review of A More Perfect Heaven.
Westword, April 3, 2014, Juliet Wittman, “Dava Sobel’s And the Sun Stood Still Shines at BETC,” theater review of And the Sun Stood Still.
Self-Portrait
I have spent my entire professional life writing, including two years as a staff reporter in the Science News department of The New York Times.
New York City born and raised, I grew up within walking distance of the Bronx Zoo and the Botanical Gardens, and attended the Bronx High School of Science (class of 1964). I was a lost soul in college (several changes of majors at three different schools). Fortunately for me, no one around me thought it odd or ill-fated for a girl to be interested in science.
Working freelance for a variety of magazines kept me busily employed until the publication of Longitude in 1995—and its unexpected success—allowed me to write books that require years of research. (I should add that I enjoy that part.)
• Most unforgettable assignment: 25 days (and nights) as a research subject in a “chronophysiology” laboratory at Montefiore Hospital, where the boarded up windows and specially trained technicians kept me from knowing whether it was day outside or night.
• Cushiest assignment: as public relations liaison for the filming of Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” TV series, I spent a month on site with the crew in Italy and Greece.
• Most surprising placement: finding myself the only non-scientist on the Planet Definition Committee of the International Astronomical Union. (We favored keeping Pluto a planet, but our recommendations were rejected.)
• Favorite compliment: The British magazine New Scientist said of Longitude, “Ms. Sobel has apparently done the impossible and made horology sexy.”
• Out of this world: An asteroid in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter has been named 30935davasobel.
Bio-Sketch
Dava Sobel is the author of Longitude (Walker 1995, Bloomsbury 2005), Galileo’s Daughter (Walker 1999 and 2011), The Planets (Viking 2005, Penguin 2006), A More Perfect Heaven (Walker/Bloomsbury 2011 and 2012), And the Sun Stood Still (Bloomsbury 2016), The Glass Universe (Viking 2016, Penguin 2017) and The Elements of Marie Curie (Grove/Atlantic 2024). She has also co-authored six books, including Is Anyone Out There? with astronomer Frank Drake, and currently edits the “Meter” poetry column in Scientific American.
AWARDS:
2001 Individual Public Service Award from the National Science Board “for fostering awareness of science and technology among broad segments of the general public.”
2001 Bradford Washburn Award from the Boston Museum of Science for her “outstanding contribution toward public understanding of science, appreciation of its fascination, and the vital roles it plays in all our lives.”
2004 Harrison Medal from the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, London, in recognition of her contribution to increasing awareness of the science of horology by the general public.
2008 Klumpke-Roberts Award from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific for “increasing the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy.”
2014 Cultural Award from the Eduard Rhein Foundation of Germany “for using her profound scientific knowledge and literary talent to combine facts with fiction by merging scientific adventures and human stories in order to give the history of science a human face.”
TEACHING:
2006: University of Chicago, as the Robert Vare Nonfiction Writer-in-Residence
2013 – 2016: Smith College, as the Joan Leiman Jacobson Visiting Nonfiction Writer.
Dava Sobel: A Well-Versed Woman
By Karen Fredericks
5 minute
02/25/2020
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Dava Sobel
Dava Sobel is the bestselling author of many books, including “Longitude,” “Galileo’s Daughter,” “The Planets,” and “The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars.”
She’s been a Pulitzer nominee. She’s been a Guggenheim Fellow. She’s also had an asteroid named after her: 30935 Davasobel.
And she’s just launched “Meter,” a monthly poetry column for Scientific American magazine.
So, what’s on your to-do list today?
The Indy caught up with Sobel, who wrote an astronomy column for The Independent in the late 1990s, and convinced her to take a few moments from her busy schedule to tell us about her newest project.
When did you read your first issue of Scientific American? Did you grow up in a household with a subscription to it?
I saw it in the house before I ever read it. Yes, my parents were subscribers. I’ve been reading it regularly since I was in high school.
How did the Meter column come about?
On August 28, 2019, I was listening to Garrison Keillor’s “The Writer’s Almanac,” as I do every day. He mentioned the anniversary of Scientific American in his history notes for the day, and said that the earliest issues had included poetry. That surprised and delighted me, so I looked up the first issue on-line, and sure enough . . .
I knew only one person on the current editorial staff, Clara Moskowitz, the senior editor for space and physics. I wrote to her that same day to see whether there might be any interest in reinstating poetry in the magazine. She consulted her colleagues, who turned out to be unanimously enthusiastic about the idea. Timing was on my side, too, since this year, 2020, is the magazine’s 175th anniversary — a choice moment for a new feature.
Many would think science and poetry are incongruous.
They are not at all incongruous. I know quite a few scientists who read poetry, and just as many poets who love science. Our recently-resident musician laureate, Billy Joel, sang of “science and poetry” in the lyrics to his “Two Thousand Years:”
“There will be miracles
After the last war is won
Science and poetry rule in the new world to come”
When did your love of poetry begin?
My own love of poetry started early, thanks to excellent grade school teachers who encouraged us to (OK, made us) memorize poems. I can still recall the first Carl Sandburg poem I committed to memory.
How do you choose the poem for each month’s column?
I have invited several poets to submit their work. I’ve also canvassed scientists and historians of science who admire poetry to suggest candidates. A few poets heard about the column and stepped forward. I hope more will do so.
I like to vary the topic from month to month. We started with natural history in January, then went to math in February, astronomy in March, and ecology in April. Coming soon: geology, climate change, archaeology, and astrophysics.
The pages contain such striking images. Who chooses them?
Creative director Michael Mrak. Some months he commissions illustrations to accompany the text, as for the February column, a poem about math demanded an imaginative artist’s treatment. The March poem concerns the “Great American Eclipse” of 2017, so he chose one of the many photographs taken of that event. I’ve been delighted with his choices.
The Meter column in the March issue features a poem by Christopher Cokinos titled ‘Eclipse.’ You’ve said you’re a “chaser of solar eclipses” and that “it’s the closest thing to witnessing a miracle.” How many have you seen?
As of this year, I’ve witnessed nine, from various parts of the world, including the 2012 total solar eclipse in Australia. I went to Wyoming in 2017 for the one that is the subject of the March poem.
Are you working on any other forthcoming books or other projects?
No new books in the works at this point. Dreaming of a science poetry
anthology.
karen@karenfredericks.com
Dava Sobel
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dava Sobel
Sobel in 2015
Born June 15, 1947 (age 77)[1]
The Bronx, New York City
Education Bronx High School of Science
Alma mater Binghamton University
Awards Guggenheim Fellowship for Natural Sciences, US & Canada, Klumpke-Roberts Award
Website www.davasobel.com Edit this at Wikidata
Signature
Dava Sobel (born June 15, 1947) is an American writer of popular expositions of scientific topics. Her books include Longitude, about English clockmaker John Harrison; Galileo's Daughter, about Galileo's daughter Maria Celeste; and The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars about the Harvard Computers.
Biography
Sobel was born in The Bronx, New York City. She graduated from the Bronx High School of Science and Binghamton University. She wrote Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time in 1995. The story was made into a television movie, of the same name by Charles Sturridge and Granada Film in 1999, and was shown in the United States by A&E.
Her book Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love was a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.[2]
Dava Sobel in November 2007
She holds honorary doctor of letters degrees from the University of Bath and Middlebury College, Vermont, both awarded in 2002.[3]
Sobel made her first foray into teaching at the University of Chicago as the Vare Writer-in-Residence in the winter of 2006. She taught a one-quarter seminar on writing about science.
She served as a judge for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award in 2012.[4]
Sobel is the niece of journalist Ruth Gruber[5] and the cousin of epidemiologist David Michaels.
Legacy
Asteroid 30935 Davasobel, discovered by Carolyn S. Shoemaker and David H. Levy was named after her for her literary work in physics.[6]
Sobel states she is a chaser of solar eclipses and that "it's the closest thing to witnessing a miracle". As of August 2012 she had seen eight, and planned to see the November 2012 total solar eclipse in Australia.[6]
Publications
External videos
video icon Presentation by Sobel on Longitude, June 17, 1997, C-SPAN
video icon Booknotes interview with Sobel on Longitude, January 17, 1999, C-SPAN
video icon Presentation by Sobel on Galileo's Daughter, December 14, 1999, C-SPAN
video icon Presentation by Sobel on Galileo's Daughter, November 19, 2000, C-SPAN
video icon Presentation by Sobel on Letters to Father, December 7, 2001, C-SPAN
video icon Presentation by Sobel on The Planets, November 15, 2005, C-SPAN
video icon Presentation by Sobel on The Glass Universe, January 19, 2017, C-SPAN
Arthritis: What Works; Revolutionary Healing Approaches From An Unprecedented Nationwide Survey Of People With Arthritis. St. Martin's Press. 1992. ISBN 978-0-312-92719-6.
Arthritis: What Exercises Work: Breakthrough Relief for the Rest of Your Life, Even After Drugs and Surgery Have Failed. St. Martin's Press. 2015. ASIN 1250068681.
Backache: What Exercises Work. St. Martin's Press. 1996.
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time (1995) ISBN 1-85702-571-7. OCLC 909490210 – the genius in question was John Harrison, who spent decades trying to convince the British Admiralty of the accuracy of his naval timepieces and their use in determining longitude when at sea in order to win the longitude prize. The book itself won the 1997 British Book of the Year award.
Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love (2000) ISBN 0-14-028055-3
The Best American Science Writing 2004 (editor) ISBN 9780060726409, OCLC 916515131
The Planets: A discourse on the discovery, science, history and mythology, of the planets in our solar system, with one chapter devoted to each of the celestial spheres. (2005) ISBN 1-85702-850-3, OCLC 77646686[7]
A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos. Bloomsbury Publishing. October 4, 2011. ISBN 978-0-8027-7893-2. OCLC 819387028[8]
The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars (2016) ISBN 9780143111344, OCLC 972263666[9]
The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science (2024) ISBN 978-0802163820, OCLC 1437997660[10][11][12]
Recognition
She was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2022 "for outstanding writings covering many centuries of key developments in physics and astronomy and the people central to those developments".[13]
The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science
Dava Sobel. Atlantic Monthly, $30 (336p) ISBN 978-0-8021-6382-0
This disappointing history from science writer Sobel (The Glass Universe) comes up short in examining how Marie Curie (1867-1934) kick-started dozens of women scientists' careers at her University of Paris laboratory. After her husband's death in 1906, Curie replaced him as laboratory director and began hiring women assistants. Her proteges included Ellen Gleditsch, who determined the half-life of radium, and Marguerite Perey, who discovered the element francium. Unfortunately, Sobel doesn't provide much discussion of Curie's working relationships with her assistants, making each scientist's biographical chapter feel curiously siloed from the others. This is likely because, as Sobel notes, a "vaguely diagnosed kidney ailment" brought on by prolonged radiation exposure kept Curie out of the lab for long stretches of time (several would-be proteges quit over the years, "frustrated by the lack of contact with Mme. Curie"). Sobel highlights the enraging sexism women scientists had to endure (Harriet Brooks worked in Curie's lab around 1906 while taking a break from her teaching duties at Barnard College, which had forced her to break off her engagement because the dean believed a married woman couldn't adequately serve both her students and her husband), but Curie's role in the women's lives remains largely opaque. This feels like a missed opportunity. Photos. Agent: Michael Carlisle, InkWell Management. (Oct.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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"The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 31, 12 Aug. 2024, pp. 55+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A807411178/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=aa931af7. Accessed 31 Jan. 2025.
Sobel, Dava THE ELEMENTS OF MARIE CURIE Atlantic Monthly (NonFiction None) $30.00 10, 8 ISBN: 9780802163820
Admiring biography, by the noted popular historian of science, of the extraordinarily accomplished Madame Curie.
As of now, notes Sobel in her opening pages, Marie Curie, née Marya Salomea Slodowska, is "the only Nobel laureate ever decorated in two separate fields of science." Sobel points to Curie's brilliance across a range of disciplines, encouraged by her progressive father, a math teacher at a Warsaw high school, who encouraged all his children to enjoy the sciences but also read Dickens aloud to them in English, "translating the text into Polish on the fly." Fortunately, at least some of the French scientific establishment was just as progressive, with the Sorbonne admitting women into medical school, and there Marya, now Marie, went, changing her study track to physics. That was a hard slog; as Sobel writes, she still had some catch-up work to do in math, and in French, a language not her own. Still, in 1893, two years after arriving in Paris, she came in first in her class and began studying for a doctorate, her topic the relatively unexciting "magnetic properties of dozens of varieties of steel." Enter Pierre Curie, with whom Marie would have a binding love until his unfortunate death; modest to a fault, he made sure to credit her for her work, even if international organizations too often did not. Indeed, Sobel makes plain that Marie was Pierre's equal and more, making critically important discoveries at the dawn of our understanding ofradioactivity--a term that Marie coined. Moreover, Sobel notes, though known as a martyr of science, dying of radiation poisoning in the form of aplastic anemia, Marie Curie should just as properly be recognized for helping dozens of women advance in the sciences.
A lucid, literate biography, celebrating a scientific exemplar who, for all her fame, deserves to be better known.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Sobel, Dava: THE ELEMENTS OF MARIE CURIE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2024. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A811898422/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=8c51e087. Accessed 31 Jan. 2025.
In a new biography, Dava Sobel focuses not just on the legendary physicist and chemist, but on the 45 women who worked in her lab.
THE ELEMENTS OF MARIE CURIE: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science, by Dava Sobel
In June 1921, in the flush of a triumphant six-week American tour by Marie Curie, a prominent male scientist urged the young women graduating from Bryn Mawr to follow her example and ''enter into a career of science.''
An unsigned editorial in The New York Times scoffed.
Not to take anything from the ''illustrious'' Mme. Curie -- then the only woman to have won a Nobel Prize and the only person to have won twice. But surely, the editorial opined, the young women must have understood ''that such achievement was not for them.'' While some might be ''efficient'' in the laboratory -- for ''drudgery'' and perhaps ''original investigation'' -- most had yet to develop ''the scientific or mechanical mind.'' Men had more ''latent capacities'' in those directions; women were too emotional to view the facts abstractly.
The Times was, to use the old newspaper cliché, not alone.
Back home in Paris, the French Academy of Sciences refused to elect her a member (it later repeatedly rebuffed her daughter, who also won a Nobel). In her new biography, ''The Elements of Marie Curie,'' Dava Sobel quotes a letter from a Yale professor recounting Curie's American visit, saying he was ''pleasantly surprised'' to find she was ''quite keen about scientific matters.''
''But I felt sorry for the poor old girl,'' he added. ''She was a distinctly pathetic figure.''
The belief that women lack the intrinsic aptitude to master math and science stubbornly persists. As Sobel begins her book: ''Even now, nearly a century after her death, Marie Curie remains the only female scientist whom most people can name.''
Previous chroniclers of women in science -- especially Margaret Rossiter in her three-volume book on the Americans among them -- have argued that Curie's exceptional achievement made it harder for women who aspired to follow her. They already suspected they'd have to be twice as good to get half as far; she made the standard more unattainable, and gave cover to male department heads looking for an excuse not to hire them: She's likable enough, but she's no Marie Curie.
Sobel, the author of several scientific biographies -- ''Longitude'' was a best seller, and ''Galileo's Daughter'' a Pulitzer finalist -- looks for a more positive result. She sets out to show how Curie's discovery of radium ''lit a path for women in science,'' namely, the 45 aspiring female scientists who ''spent a formative period in the Curie lab at the Sorbonne.''
But her telling confirms, heartbreakingly at times, just how narrow and gloomy the path was.
Curie herself was able to have a lab of her own only because her husband, the physicist Pierre Curie, demanded that the school where he worked give her the space. Her father-in-law moved in with the couple to babysit for their two children. After Pierre and Marie Curie shared the Nobel, the Sorbonne gave Pierre a professorial chair; Marie was relegated to chief of operations in his new lab. The university made her its first female professor only in 1906, after Pierre was killed by a horse-drawn wagon on a rainy night near the Pont Neuf.
As with so many early women in science, Curie's is a story of self-sacrifice: Before she met Pierre, she nearly starved herself, living on tea and bread as she studied in a Parisian garret. After his death, she dressed in black and shunned attention. Urged to write a memoir, she wrote his biography instead. She poured what paltry prize money she won back into buying bits of radium for her research.
With rare exceptions, the 45 other women subjects appear in Sobel's book only as emanations. Sobel names her chapters for them, but tells little of their stories beyond that. One, Irén Götz, is mentioned in only one sentence in the chapter named for her.
Two get fuller treatment. After Barnard College told Harriet Brooks she had to quit because she was getting married, she did -- her job as a physics instructor and the engagement, too, only to sacrifice her career for another marriage down the road. Ellen Gleditsch became a university professor in Norway, but after 13 years the university still refused to grant her tenure or lab space.
Support came from several men, one of whom referred to his wife as B.G., for ''Beautiful Genius.'' When Curie, four years widowed, was attacked as immoral for an affair with a married man, Albert Einstein defended her. (The man in question went on to have a child out of wedlock with a former student working in his lab; predictably, no scandal ensued.)
By contrast, the women in Sobel's book doubted themselves, and Curie. Some noted that she barely showed up in the lab as her health declined from years of exposure to the radioactivity she had discovered. And those who did try to improve conditions for women often worried that such efforts only distracted them from their scientific passions. As one suffragist scientist wrote, ''I often think very sadly that I might have been more useful to the Cause if I had devoted myself to my own special work as Madame Curie has done.''
As in her earlier books, Sobel writes elegantly about science, unspooling Curie's pursuits in the lab like a mystery. She leaves us less clear how Curie herself viewed the position of women in science. When a member of the Nobel Committee suggested that she not come to Stockholm to collect her second prize in 1911 because of the bad publicity around her affair, she insisted on going: ''I believe there is no connection between my scientific work and the facts of private life.'' But when Gleditsch and others formed an international society devoted to promoting women in science, Curie declined ''to ally herself.''
Her ailments debilitated her so much that she begged off several events on her American tour. Her exposure to the very elements she had discovered ultimately killed her. The Times ran its obituary on the front page of July 5, 1934: ''Mme. Curie Is Dead; Martyr to Science.''
THE ELEMENTS OF MARIE CURIE: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science | By Dava Sobel | Atlantic Monthly Press | 336 pp. | $30
Kate Zernike is a national reporter at The Times.
CAPTION(S):
PHOTO: Marie Curie working in the laboratory of a Paris university in 1925. (PHOTOGRAPH FROM AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE -- GETTY IMAGES) This article appeared in print on page BR13.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com
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Zernike, Kate. "A Long Half-Life." The New York Times Book Review, 27 Oct. 2024, p. 13. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A813730585/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=02487e43. Accessed 31 Jan. 2025.