Although Copernicus had the courage to imagine an alternate universe in which the Earth rotated and revolved, it took him decades — and lots of encouragement from unexpected quarters — to promulgate his idea for a Sun-centered system of planets. His great work, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, published in 1543 and read by generations of astronomers, spent 200 years on the Index of Prohibited Books.
Science writer Dava Sobel, a former reporter for The New York Times, is the author of Longitude, Galileo’s Daughter, The Planets, and A More Perfect Heaven. She is currently the Joan Leiman Jacobson Visiting Nonfiction Writer at Smith College. Ms. Sobel has chased a few solar eclipses with Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy Jay Pasachoff and looks forward to seeing her play, “And the Sun Stood Still,” read by the Williams College Theater Department. More information about her is available at http://davasobel.com/?page_id=547.
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