Science, Technology, Medicine and Society Colloquium. "Complete Inventions: The Galilean Telescope and its Rivals."

November 3, 2009
4:00PM - 5:30PM, The Gallery Room 100, Hatcher Graduate Library, 920 N. University.

Host Department: Center for European Studies - European Union Center (CES-EUC)

Eileen Reeves, professor of comparative literature and director, Program in European Cultural Studies, Princeton University. Sponsors: STS; CES-EUC; RLL; Special Collections, Hatcher Library. The 2009 is a centenary year of Galileo and for the history of astronomy, because it was in 1609 that Galileo, the Tuscan mathematician first peered through the telescope and wrote down his observations. The University of Michigan library owns a first draft of a letter Galileo wrote about the telescope containing sketches of what he saw through it from August, 1609. Draft of a letter from Galileo to the Doge of Venice (1609), and notes on the moons of Jupiter (1610)- Special Collections Library, University of Michigan. Link to the manuscript: http://www.lib.umich.edu/special-collections-library/galileo-letter

Further Information

Abstract: This lecture will examine the delay between the moment when news of the Dutch telescope reached Venice, in November 1608, and Galileo Galilei’s own professed acquaintance with such rumors, or with the device itself, in the early summer of 1609.  In trying to account for his uncharacteristic tardiness, it will focus on alternative  conjectures and practices concerning telescopic vision, and also attempt to show what differences in astronomical discovery might have resulted from this delay.


Eileen Reeves is professor of Comparative Literature and an associate member of the Program in the History of Science at Princeton University.  Her area of specialization is early modern scientific literature.  She published Painting the Heavens: Art and Science in the Age of Galileo in 1997, and Galileo’s Glassworks: The Telescope and the Mirror in 2007.  On Sunspots, co-written with Albert van Helden, will appear in 2010.

Contact Information: ces-euc@umich.edu