Dante and the Early Astronomer: Science, Adventure, and a Victorian Woman Who Opened the Heavens

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Explore the evolution of astronomy from Dante to Einstein, as seen through the eyes of trailblazing Victorian astronomer Mary Acworth Evershed   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 then 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. Contents Preface: The Dawn-Light of Ravenna Acknowledgments 1. On the Hilltop 2. To the Lighthouse 3. The City of Stars 4. Poetry and Sunspots 5. “Black Star-Lore” 6. Physical Astronomy 7. Romantics 8. Prisms 9. The Notebook of the Sun 10. The Gift of the Forest 11. The Scarcity of Wasps in Kashmir 12. Harmonic Structures 13. “Dante and the Early Astronomers” 14. Sun-Chasers 15. Exploding the Sun 16. Saturnalia 17. Infinity and the Fly 18. Wallal 19. Departure 20. Who’s Who in the Moon 21. The Maunder Minimum 22. The Remade Universe 23. Return to Origins 24. Northern Lights Epilogue: Kodai Dusk Notes Bibliography Index