Dava Sobel
| Dava Sobel | |
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Sobel speaking at a Yale event in 2007
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| Born | June 15, 1947 The Bronx, New York City |
| Education | The Bronx High School of Science Binghamton University |
Dava Sobel (born June 15, 1947,[1] The Bronx, New York) is an American writer of popular expositions of scientific topics.
Biography
Sobel was born on June 15, 1947 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 nominated for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.[2]
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]
Publications
- Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time (1995) – 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. ISBN 1-85702-571-7. 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)
- 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
- A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionised the Cosmos (2011) ISBN 978-0-8027-1793-1
Legacy
The asteroid 30935 Davasobel is named after her.[5]
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 has seen eight, and planned to see the November 2012 total solar eclipse in Australia.[6]
References
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dava Sobel. |
- Dava Sobel at the Internet Movie Database
- About the Author: Dava Sobel.
- Book Review: Longitude by Dava Sobel.
- Website of the Author Dava Sobel
- Podcast of Dava Sobel discussing “The Origins of Longitude” at the Shanghai International Literary Festival
- Appearances on C-SPAN
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