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The Sun in the Church Cathedrals as Solar Observatories Posted December 1, 1999 By John L. Heilbron Professor of the History of Science and former Vice Chancellor, now Senior Research Fellow, Worcester College, Oxford Between 1650 and 1750, four Catholic churches were the best solar observatories in the world. Built to establish an unquestionable date for Easter, they also housed instruments that threw light on the disputed geometry of the solar system, and so, within sight of the altar, subverted church doctrine about the order of the universe. A tale of politically canny astronomers and of cardinals with a taste for mathematics, Heilbron tells how these observatories came to be, how they worked, and what they accomplished. It describes Galileo's political overreaching, his subsequent trial for heresy, and his slow and steady rehabilitation in the eyes of the Catholic Church. Above all, the book illuminates the niches protected and financed by the Catholic Church in which science and mathematics thrived. A reviewer for the New York Times Book Review said Heilbron "...turns the tables on tired stories of the war between science and religion." Harvard University Press 366 pages   [HOME]   [SEARCH]   [ARCHIVE] December 1, 1999 - January 11, 2000 (Volume 28, Number 16) Copyright 1999, The Regents of the University of California. Produced and maintained by the Office of Public Affairs at UC Berkeley. Comments? E-mail berkeleyan@pa.urel.berkeley.edu.