October 2007 Newsletter Vol. 36 No. 4
2007 Guggenheim Winners
Dava Sobel, a science writer who has written for the New York Times, Audubon, Discover, Life and The New Yorker, has also written books in the history of science, including Galileo’s Daughter and Longitude.
What the Guggenheim Foundation succinctly labels “Copernicus” in my grant description is actually a play about the events leading up to the publication of De Revolutionibus. As readers of this Newsletter no doubt know, much inherent drama surrounds De Rev, including the fact that Copernicus, according to the contemporary account of his closest friend, died on the very day the finished pages reached his hands, on 24 May 1543.
The writing of De Rev occupied Copernicus for more than three decades, and yet, as he admitted in his dedication to Pope Paul III, “The scorn which I had to fear on account of the novelty and unconventionality of my opinion almost induced me to abandon the work I had undertaken.”
In 1539, however, he was apparently pushed to publish by a surprise visit from a brilliant young stranger, Georg Joachim Rheticus, who traveled from Luther’s Wittenberg to the northernmost Catholic diocese of Poland expressly to question Copernicus about the heliocentric hypothesis. In just a few days – or perhaps only a matter of hours (no one really knows) – he convinced Copernicus to return to work on De Rev.
“That must have been some conversation,” I remember thinking to myself upon first reading of their encounter in Arthur Koestler’s The Sleepwalkers. The situation immediately suggested the plot for a play, although at that time, thirty-odd years ago, I lacked the courage to attempt writing one.
Heartened by the enthusiastic reception of my own recent books, and re-inspired by Owen Gingerich’s The Book Nobody Read, I started work in 2006 on a play called “And the Sun Stood Still.”
My play was commissioned by the Manhattan Theatre Club with funds from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (both enthusiastic boosters of science on stage). The willingness of the Guggenheim Foundation to support my work allowed me to travel to Poland and view the original manuscript of De Rev at the Jagiellonian Library in Krakow. This was a rare and wonderful experience – comparable to viewing a total solar eclipse, in that it lasted only a few minutes, and something normally invisible came to light: a hole in the page where Copernicus drew his Sun-centered cosmos (the natural consequence of using a pair of compasses to establish eight concentric circles).
My fondest wish for this project, as with any of my articles or books, is to offer a moment of crucial scientific insight to an audience generally considered unreceptive to science.
Although the dialogue necessarily arises from my own imagination, it is based on fact and incorporates quotations from the writings of Copernicus, Rheticus, Tiedemann Giese, and Johannes Dantiscus. When I publish “And the Sun Stood Still,” I will include copious historical notes.
I expect to complete the play by December 2007. By then the Manhattan Theatre Club will have decided whether to exercise its option to produce a “world premiere.” I sincerely hope that happens, but I also dream of productions by university theater departments, as part of interdisciplinary efforts with students of astronomy and history of science.