Title: Decoding the Stars : a Biography of Angelo Secchi, Jesuit and Scientist
Description: In Decoding the Stars, Ileana Chinnici offers an account of the life of the Jesuit scientist Angelo Secchi (1818-1878). As well as providing an invaluable account of Secchi's life and work-something that has been sorely lacking in the English-language scholarship-this biography will be especially stimulating for those interested in the evolution of astronomy as a discipline from the nineteenth century onward. 0Despite his eclecticism, reminiscent of the natural philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Secchi was in many ways a very modern scientist: open to innovation and cooperation, and a promoter of popularization and citizen science.0Secchi also appears fully inserted in the cultural context of his time: he participated in philosophical and scientific debates, spread new theories and ideas, but also suffered the consequences of political events that marked those years and impacted on his life and activities.
Subjects: Jesuits, Astronomers, Astronomy, history, Astrophysics, Italy, biography, Biography, Astronomy, History