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In the autumn of 1609, the Italian mathematician and astronomer Galileo Galilei turned his telescope to the heavens, deciphering the cratered face of the moon, the four satellites of Jupiter, and other previously opaque features of the heavens. When, in 1610, Galileo published his Sidereus Nuncius, or Starry Messenger, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler responded with enthusiasm, praising the significance of Galileo’s observations with his own Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo, or, Conversations with the Starry Messenger (1610). To whom else did the stars speak in the early modern period?
Rachel Louise Carson, noted biologist and environmentalist who fascinated readers with three books on the wonders of the sea and awakened the American public to the dangers of pesticide misuse with a highly controversial bestseller, was born on May 27, 1907, in Springdale, Pennsylvania. She was interested in writing at an early age and submitted a number of juvenile stories, poems, and essays to leading youth magazines. Rachel Carson's first book, Under the Sea Wind , attracted little notice on its appearance in 1941. However, her second book on the sea, The Sea Around Us (1951), remained on the best-seller lists for eighty-six weeks, was eventually translated into thirty languages, and received many awards.
“I have no Knowledge of it at all,” wrote Ezra Stiles of alchemy. “I never saw Transmutation, the aurific Powder, nor the Philosophers Stone,” the early President of Yale College continued, “nor did I ever converse with an Adept knowing him to be such. ...
