Search results for ""Author Nina Rattner Gelbart""
Yale University Press Minerva's French Sisters: Women of Science in Enlightenment France
A fascinating collective biography of six female scientists in eighteenth-century France, whose stories were largely written out of history “Of the 72 scientific names engraved on the Eiffel Tower, none is female. Omissions include the six Enlightenment women dubbed ‘Minerva’s sisters’ by historian Nina Gelbart in her pioneering, evocative rescue.”—Nature This book presents the stories of six intrepid Frenchwomen of science in the Enlightenment whose accomplishments—though celebrated in their lifetimes--have been generally omitted from subsequent studies of their period: mathematician and philosopher Elisabeth Ferrand, astronomer Nicole Reine Lepaute, field naturalist Jeanne Barret, garden botanist and illustrator Madeleine Françoise Basseporte, anatomist and inventor Marie-Marguerite Biheron, and chemist Geneviève d’Arconville. By adjusting our lens, we can find them. In a society where science was not yet an established profession for men, much less women, these six audacious and inspiring figures made their mark on their respective fields of science and on Enlightenment society, as they defied gender expectations and conventional norms. Their boldness and contributions to science were appreciated by such luminaries as Franklin, the philosophes, and many European monarchs. The book is written in an unorthodox style to match the women’s breaking of boundaries.
£32.50
University of California Press Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds
Surveying the night sky, a charming philosopher and his hostess, the Marquise, are considering the possibility of travelers from the moon. 'What if they were skillful enough to navigate on the outer surface of our air, and from there, through their curiosity to see us, they angled for us like fish? Would that please you?' asks the philosopher. 'Why not?' the Marquise replies. 'As for me, I'd put myself into their nets of my own volition just to have the pleasure of seeing those who caught me'. In this imaginary conversation of three hundred years ago, readers can share the excitement of a new, extremely daring view of the universe. "Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds" ("Entretiens sur la pluralite des mondes"), first published in 1686, is one of the best loved classics of the early French enlightenment. Through a series of informal dialogues that take place on successive evenings in the marquise's moonlit gardens, Fontenelle describes the new cosmology of the Copernican world view with matchless clarity, imagination, and wit. Moreover, he boldly makes his interlocutor a woman, inviting female participation in the almost exclusively male province of scientific discourse. The popular Fontenelle lived through an entire century, from 1657 to 1757, and wrote prolifically. H. A. Hargreaves' fresh, appealing translation brings the author's masterpiece to new generations of readers, while the introduction by Nina Rattner Gelbart clearly demonstrates the importance of the "Conversations" for the history of science, of women, of literature, and of French civilization, and for the popularization of culture.
£21.00
