He had already begun his experiments during Maria Celeste’s early years. The letters were not only a means of keeping in touch with him, but for learning news of the outside world and the scientific discoveries-and upheavals-her father was making. Maria Celeste’s letters are written fondly, using elaborate and flattering titles to address her father that show her love for him. She spent the rest of her life living simply and in seclusion. Her letters were her only means of contact with her father from within the convent. Virginia took the veil and became a nun at age 16, and adopted the name Suor Maria Celeste at that time. As such, the girls’ marriage prospects were poor, and so Virginia and her sister joined the San Matteo convent in Arcetri, Italy, in their adolescence. Born Virginia Galilei in 1600, she and her siblings were all illegitimate. Sobel offers necessary context on Maria Celeste. Her letters also offer a glimpse of who Galileo was on a personal level. His daughter’s letters, and the book, display her sharp mind, hard work, and love for her publicly disgraced father.

Sobel, a well-known science writer, based the book on Maria Celeste’s 124 surviving letters Galileo’s are lost to history. It details the relationship between Renaissance scientist Galileo and his daughter Suor Maria Celeste, a nun. With all the human drama and scientific adventure that distinguished Latitude, Galileo's Daughter is an unforgettable story.Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love is a 1999 nonfiction book by Dava Sobel. Moving between Galileo's public life and Maria Celeste's sequestered world, Sobel illuminates the Florence of the Medicis and the papal court in Rome during an era when humanity's perception of its place in the cosmos was overturned. Galileo's Daughter dramatically recolors the personality and accomplishment of a mythic figure whose 17th-century clash with Catholic doctrine continues to define the schism between science and religion. Her presence, through letters which Sobel has translated from Italian and masterfully woven into the narrative, graces her father's life now as it did then. Her support was her father's greatest source of strength. Galileo's oldest child was 13 when he placed her in a convent near him in Florence, where she took the most appropriate name of Suor Maria Celeste. For this belief, he was brought before the Holy Office of the Inquisition, accused of heresy, and forced to spend his last years under house arrest. His telescopes allowed him to reveal the heavens and enforce the astounding argument that the Earth moves around the sun. Though he never left Italy, his inventions and discoveries were heralded around the world. Galileo Galilei was the foremost scientist of his day.

Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel