Dava Sobel
New York
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Articles by Dava Sobel
Behind every great personal library is a woman with a little shelf awareness
There are as many ways to read as there are ways to be a woman. This Women’s Month, these are the books that deserve a place on every bookshelf, whatever chapter of life you’re in. There are people who enjoy reading, and there are people who like collecting books for the purpose of curating a home library of classics. As someone who identifies as both, I’ll be the first to tell you that this Women’s Month selection spans either end of the spectrum.
W powszechnej wyobraźni naukowcy to dziwacy. Ten obraz jest niepokojący
Od 50 lat piszę o nauce. Przeprowadziłam rozmowy z setkami naukowców – od młodych badaczy po doktoracie do znacznie starszych od nich dyrektorów laboratoriów – w tym z kilkoma laureatami Nagrody Nobla. Żaden z nich nie pasował do tego stereotypu. Owszem, kilku okazało się ludźmi mało sympatycznymi, ale nie w standardowy sposób. Dlaczego więc ciągle natrafiam na ten nieprawdziwy obraz?
Mania. Zanim świat poznał Marię Skłodowską-Curie [fragment książki]
Maria Skłodowska-Curie urodziła się w 1867 r.
Distrust in science thrives on dangerous stereotypes
Scientists are seen as oddballs, and that’s a problem Dava Sobel Tue, June 16, 2026 at 9:54 AM UTC 6 min read Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Distrust in science thrives on dangerous stereotypes Scientists, in the popular imagination, are oddballs. A chemist or geologist may be a genius, it is generally agreed, but the heightened mental acuity comes at great social and emotional cost, rendering the scientist a misfit, a weirdo, a robot in human clothing.
Maria Skłodowska-Curie i Pierre Curie. Miłość i nauka zmieniają świat
Poznała Pierre’a Curie podczas pracy laboratoryjnej, a ich relacja szybko przerodziła się w bliski związek i naukowe partnerstwo. Fragment pochodzi z książki Davy Sobel "Pierwiastki Marii Skłodowskiej-Curie. Jak blask radu oświetlił drogę kobietom w świecie nauki", która ukazała się nakładem Wydawnictwa Helion. Na początku 1894 roku profesor Lippmann pomógł jej uzyskać zlecenie od Towarzystwa Wspierania Przemysłu Narodowego.
Mania. Zanim świat poznał Marię Skłodowską-Curie
Fragment pochodzi z książki Davy Sobel „Pierwiastki Marii Skłodowskiej-Curie. Jak blask radu oświetlił drogę kobietom w świecie nauki”, która ukazała się nakładem Wydawnictwa Helion. Kobieta znana światu jako „madame Curie” przyszła na świat 7 listopada 1867 roku jako Maria Salomea Skłodowska. Najmłodsza z piątki rodzeństwa, w domu nazywana była Manią, a także zdrobniale Maniusią, a czasem Anciupecio.
Zahipnotyzowani marzeniami. Jak pokochali się Maria Skłodowska i Pierre Curie
Fragment pochodzi z książki Davy Sobel „Pierwiastki Marii Skłodowskiej-Curie. Jak blask radu oświetlił drogę kobietom w świecie nauki”, która ukazała się nakładem Wydawnictwa Helion. Na początku 1894 roku profesor Lippmann pomógł jej uzyskać zlecenie od Towarzystwa Wspierania Przemysłu Narodowego. Miała badać właściwości magnetyczne kilkudziesięciu rodzajów stali — kwestię o kluczowym znaczeniu dla handlu. Magnesy od prawie tysiąca lat stanowiły niezbędny element kompasów nawigacyjnych.
The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science
Dava Sobel, acclaimed and bestselling author of Longitude, chronicles the life and work of the most famous woman in the history of science – and the untold story of the young women who trained in her laboratory. For decades Marie Curie was the only woman in the room at international scientific gatherings, and despite constant illness she travelled far and wide to share the secrets of radioactivity, a term she coined. She is still the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields.
The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science přehled
Domů Knihy The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science Přehled Dava Sobel, acclaimed and bestselling author of Longitude, chronicles the life and work of the most famous woman in the history of science – and the untold story of the young women who trained in her laboratory.
Die Elemente der Marie Curie
Dava Sobel erzählt die Geschichte der berühmtesten Frau der Wissenschaft – und die der Frauen, die in ihrem Labor ausgebildet wurden. Nach dem Tod ihres Mannes übernahm Marie Curie seine Professur an der Sorbonne, zog zwei Töchter groß, brachte im Ersten Weltkrieg ein Röntgengerät an die Front und inspirierte Generationen von Frauen, Wissenschaft als Lebensweg zu wählen. Frauen in der Wissenschaft Sobel nähert sich der zweifachen Nobelpreisträgerin aus einem neuen Blickwinkel.
Mentor to Women or Martyr to Science? Original
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.
The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science
Marie Curie’s life was defined by professional triumph and personal tragedy. Ninety years after her death, she remains history’s most famous woman scientist. Curie was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize – in 1903, she and her husband, Pierre, received the award for physics. In 1911, she was awarded a second Nobel Prize, this time for chemistry. She is still the only Nobel laureate to be garlanded in two scientific fields.
Book Review: Longitude By Dava Sobel — A Concise History Of John Harrison And His Marine Chronometers
One can only look at watches for so long before the obsession requires other inputs. Recommended by my father, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel ended up being exactly the watch-adjacent content I was looking for. It’s a book about ingenuity, dedication, betrayal, eventual triumph, and a great deal of hard-earned money.
Poem: Other Worlds in Haiku
Panorama: This view of Mars's Teal Ridge was captured by NASA's Curiosity rover in 2019. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS The following haiku, written in the traditional three-line, 17-syllable format by teams of planetary scientists, summarize research results reported at the 52nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, which was held virtually March 15–19, 2021. “Detailed Chloride Mapping in Terra Sirenum, Mars” Oceans long since past Dry, cracked ground, no trace remains But the taste of salt. —E.
Bring Your Own Identity
Successfully reported this slideshow. Activate your 30 day free trial to unlock unlimited reading. Bring Your Own Identity (BYOI) is the enabling of employees, customers, and constituents to use their own defined identities to access organizational resources and or entitlements. This trend is being embraced and extended to use individual social media identities. Organizations that embrace BYOI save on identity management costs as well as enable better directed marketing and communications.
36 Faces of Facebook Fans. The Good the Bad & the Ugly
Like any large ecosystem, Facebook’s billion-strong audience presents a fascinating glimpse into the sheer variety of fans that swarm to brand pages like African fauna around a watering hole. While many are relatively benign, and some are downright pleasant, there do exist various types that have the potential to drive one to drink. Come now as we draw back the curtain on Facebook fans and examine the good, the bad and the ugly of social media.
Jethro, Abe, and John
Years ago, there was a great commercial that summed up a lot of people’s impressions, about those who get things done and those who talk about doing things. The commercial had a fella sitting behind a desk, his hair was kind of messed up, he looked a bit frumpy, but you could tell he was a boss of some kind, and he was reading someone’s resume. He seemed a bit disappointed, and I recall he was delivering some bad news to the applicant, who was sitting across from him, whom we haven’t seen yet.
A Biography of the Woman Who Will Re-Engineer Humans
Nonfiction In “The Code Breaker” Walter Isaacson reprises several of his previous themes — science, genius, experiment, code, thinking different — and meets his first female subject, Jennifer Doudna, a genuine heroine for our time.Credit...Anastasiia Sapon for The New York Times March 8, 2021 THE CODE BREAKER Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race By Walter Isaacson The coronavirus pandemic forced Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier to accept the 2020 Nobel...
Longitude
An exciting scientific adventure from the days of wooden ships and iron men, Longitude is full of heroism and chicanery, brilliance and the absurd. It is also a captivating brief history of astronomy, navigation and clockmaking. During the great ages of exploration, "the longitude problem" was the gravest of all scientific challenges. Lacking the ability to determine their longitude, sailors were literally lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land.
Poem: A Unified Theory of Love
Edited by Dava Sobel Should I walk the Planck length between my heart and yours, drown in the liquid abyss of space-time deep within my sea dreams that scope and chart macro geometries of love by star arc in night sky, heaven's whirls of light and elemental fire would still shimmer through unfathomed depth and distance to mark in micro beats of time our bodies' magnetic needs.
Nature in Verse: What Poetry Reveals about Science
As a lifelong reader of Scientific American, I was tickled to discover a little over a year ago that the magazine had carried poetry in its earliest issues. Volume I, Number 1, for example, dated 28 August 1845, included a poem called “Attraction” that touched on gravity, magnetism and sexual allure. Within a few years, however, the magazine’s original publisher, Rufus Porter, sold Scientific American, and the new owners showed no interest in poetry.
Our Trusty Friend the Watch
The curious Lilliputians guessed Gulliver’s pocket-watch must be ‘the God that he worships’, because ‘he assured us he seldom did anything without consulting it.’ The giant King of Brobdingnag had a different perspective: Gulliver must ‘be a piece of Clockwork (which is in that country arrived to a very great perfection)’. Any acute 18th-century reader of Swift would easily make sense of these timely jokes.
AND THE SUN STOOD STILL
A mathematical genius and astronomer who wrote in Latin and spoke six languages, Nicolaus Copernicus was a true Renaissance man. However, there was one thing he knew to be true that his faith would not allow him say: The earth orbits the sun.
Loss of Gravity: Has the Earth Sprung a Leak?
Look at this—a line of perfect dime-size pinhole-projected suns across my legal pad this morning.
A MORE PERFECT HEAVEN
Copernicus’s story is told in two parts: one, an account of his personal life, his roles in the Church and society, and his scientific work; the other, a play about his encounter with a young mathematician and the release of his astronomical theories. Suzanne Toren reads the history in a strong, clear, expressive voice, intelligently and with varied, natural-sounding changes in tone and emphasis. What’s unnatural are the unnecessary pauses between some sentences, even between some words.
A giant leap for womankind
The dozen Moonwalkers to date have all been men. Credit: Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images Global affairs A giant leap for womankind The Moon needs more than men The Moon is feminine in French – in all the Romance languages, in fact. Even in English, which does not assign genders to inanimate objects, the Moon is presumed female.
Galileo's Place in Science
Galileo pursued all his bold investigations convinced that Nature followed a Divine order. Just as the Bible represented the dictated word of God, so the natural world embodied God's work. The persistent observer could decipher its hidden patterns, on Earth and in the heavens. Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens.
The Last World | DiscoverMagazine.com
From its outpost on the solar system’s far frontier, Pluto tantalizes would-be explorers with its remoteness and mystery. This is the maverick planet: the farthest, the smallest, the darkest, the coldest, and arguably the strangest.
‘The Perfectionists’ Review: Two Cheers for Exactitude
Simon Winchester’s new book, “The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World,” is a tale of many triumphs, but the telling of it leaves the author dispirited. Having surveyed the progress of exactness by narrating a grand, informed sweep from the steam engines of the 18th century to today’s automated assembly of microscopic computer chips, he ends up longing for a lost and less precise world.
On the Many Braveries of Marjory Stoneman Douglas
When I first heard about the shooting, I felt only horror, the same as everyone else. But my second thought was regret that the bloodshed of February 14 in Parkland, Florida had tied the name Marjory Stoneman Douglas to the violent deaths of teenagers and teachers. She had long been better known as a gifted writer and environmentalist who campaigned most of her 108 years—from the 1920s through the 1990s—for the preservation of the Everglades.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas Was a Brave Writer, and Would Have Supported Student Protest
When I first heard about the shooting, I felt only horror, the same as everyone else. But my second thought was regret that the bloodshed of February 14 in Parkland, Florida had tied the name Marjory Stoneman Douglas to the violent deaths of teenagers and teachers. She had long been better known as a gifted writer and environmentalist who campaigned most of her 108 years—from the 1920s through the 1990s—for the preservation of the Everglades.
Science’s Invisible Women
Nonfiction Image British women in the 1920s using chemical processes to test batches of milk from cows. March 19, 2018 A LAB OF ONE’S OWN Science and Suffrage in the First World War By Patricia Fara 334 pp. Oxford University Press. $24.95. BROAD BAND The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet By Claire L. Evans 278 pp. Portfolio/Penguin. $27. A woman scientist was such a rarity in early 20th-century Britain that other women could not conceal their surprise at encountering one.
A Woman's Place
Our critics chose 15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century. By DWIGHT GARNER, PARUL SEHGAL and JENNIFER SZALAI
The Species Seekers by Richard Conniff
This exuberant account presents the naturalists of the 1700s and 1800s — including Linnaeus, Darwin, and Audubon — brilliant eccentrics who sought to catalog the planet’s myriad inhabitants for science. “Conniff is a splendid writer… one can’t resist quoting him” (The New York Times). featured on BookBub on August 21, 2017 Beginning with Linnaeus, a colorful band of explorers made it their mission to travel to the most perilous corners of the planet and bring back astonishing new life forms.
9 Eclipses, 4 Continents, Never Tired of the Spectacle
In answer to the “What, again?!” reactions my travel plans sometimes elicit, I try to explain the ineluctable lure that eclipses hold for me. Wherever totality occurs, the sudden midday darkness recolors the landscape and confounds the senses. The marvelous coincidence that makes the enormous sun and puny moon appear the same size in earth’s skies to create the dazzling vision that we will see does not repeat from the vantage point of any other planet.
Dava Sobel to Keynote 2017 Dan’s Literary Prize Gala
Dan’s Papers is thrilled to announce the keynote speaker for our 6th Annual Dan’s Papers Literary Prize for Nonfiction Gala Awards, which will be held on Thursday, August 31 at Guild Hall in East Hampton. She’s a science writer who lives in Springs. She attended the prestigious Bronx High School of Science.
Calculating Women
After a precisely calculated and perfectly executed voyage, the Mars Orbiter Mission reached its destination on September 24, 2014. The Indian Space Research Organisation, which oversaw the mission, had succeeded in doing what Russia, the United States, China, and Japan had failed to do: send an unmanned probe into orbit around Mars on the first attempt.
Arte & Marketing, by Martha Gabriel no ProXXIma 2013
Successfully reported this slideshow. Activate your 30 day free trial to unlock unlimited reading. Palestra sobre os benefícios da arte para o marketing, ministrada por Martha Gabriel no ProXXIma 2013, São Paulo, Brasil, 9/maio/2013. Palestra sobre os benefícios da arte para o marketing, ministrada por Martha Gabriel no ProXXIma 2013, São Paulo, Brasil, 9/maio/2013. More Related Content 1. @MarthaGabriel mARkeTing martha gabriel 2.
In The 1800s, These Harvard Women Studied The Stars
Beginning in the late-1800s, women were employed by the Harvard College Observatory to study images of the stars that were captured by the observatory’s telescopes.
Rebekah Higgitt - Queens of the Night | Literary Review | Issue 450
Looking back from the first decade of the 20th century, Herbert Hall Turner, Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, believed that ‘a revolution in almost all departments of Astronomy, theoretical and practical’ had recently taken place. He dated its beginning to about 1875, when the new techniques of photography and spectroscopy arrived at his then-workplace, the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.
DAVA SOBEL: THE GLASS UNIVERSE: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars - KSCJ 1360
Book: THE GLASS UNIVERSE: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars New from #1 New York Times bestselling author Dava Sobel, the “inspiring” (People), little-known true story of women’s landmark contributions to astronomy Named one of the best books of the year by NPR, The Economist, Smithsonian, Nature, and NPR’s Science Friday Nominated for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began...
Win A Copy Of The Book 'The Glass Universe' By Dava Sobel - RedCarpetCrash.com
In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or “human computers,” to interpret the observations their male counterparts made via telescope each night. At the outset this group included the wives, sisters, and daughters of the resident astronomers, but soon the female corps included graduates of the new women’s colleges—Vassar, Wellesley, and Smith.
'Hidden Figures,' 'The Glass Universe,' And Why Science Needs History
'Hidden Figures,' 'The Glass Universe,' And Why Science Needs History Editor's Note: This story originally gave the time it takes light to travel from the sun to Earth as just over eight seconds. The correct time is just over eight minutes. Your editor is very embarrassed. Earth spins at 1,040 mph. Light travels 186,000 miles per second. It takes just over eight minutes for sunlight to reach Earth; light from the moon reaches us in just under 1.5 seconds.
The Glass Universe by Dava Sobel | PenguinRandomHouse.com
New from #1 New York Times bestselling author Dava Sobel, t he “inspiring” ( People ), little-known true story of women’s landmark contributions to astronomy “A joy to read.” — The Wall Street Journal Named one of the best books of the year by NPR, The Economist, Smithsonian, Nature, and NPR’s Science Friday Nominated for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or “human computers,”...
The legacy of early female astronomers
More than 100 years ago, a group of women started recording constellations using magnifying glasses and glass photographic plates. Half a million plates later, the images captured continue to provide a reference for how space has evolved over time. “Some of those plates have as many as 50,000 stars on them,” said Dava Sobel, the author of “Glass Universe,” a new book about these early female astronomers.
'The Glass Universe,' By Dava Sobel : NPR
Dava Sobel is as adept at spotting promising subject matter as the extraordinary women astronomers she writes about in The Glass Universe were at spotting variable stars. By translating complex information into manageable bites sweetened with human interest stories, Sobel makes hard science palatable for the general audience. Even more than her 1999 book Galileo's Daughter, this new work highlights women's often under-appreciated role in the history of science.
Author Dava Sobel’s pioneers boldly go into astronomy history | The Star-Telegram
Dava Sobel, a former science reporter, has extended her field of expertise to include the bestselling books Longitude, Galileo’s Daughter and The Planets. Her latest, The Glass Universe, tells the true story of the early, mostly forgotten, female astronomers, who nonetheless made huge contributions to the field.
History: Women who read the stars - Nature
Sue Nelson delights in Dava Sobel's account of a rare band of human computers. The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars Dava Sobel Viking: 2016. 9780670016952 9780007548187 | ISBN: 978-0-6700-1695-2 There are half a million photographic plates in the Harvard College Observatory collection, all unique. They date to the mid-1880s, and each can display the light from 50,000 stars.
How Astronomer Cecilia Payne Proved Her ‘Impossible’ Theory About the Stars
Astronomers recently used large radio telescopes in Germany and Australia to map the distribution of hydrogen gas throughout our galaxy, the Milky Way. Meanwhile, another team of researchers is looking back in time to track the so-called “hydrogen epoch” in early cosmic history, when the first celestial lights in the universe turned on. Although all astronomers now recognize hydrogen as the most abundant element in space and the main component of stars and galaxies, that fact was slow to dawn.
Pop-In@Nordstrom Welcomes Warby Parker
Everyone knows all the cool girls are really bookworms—what they don’t know is what all the cool bookworms are reading. You will now though; just follow along with this series as Pop-In@Nordstrom Welcomes Warby Parker helps us celebrate the literary life well lived. This is Swedish-born British illustrator and graphic designer Frida Wannerberger, en rose.
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