Leonardo: The First Scientist - Softcover

White, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312270267 ISBN 13: 9780312270261

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 2001

Synopsis

Celebrated as a painter and engineer during his lifetime, Leonardo da Vinci was the very embodiment of the Renaissance Man. But few guessed at the extent of his scientific investigations and experiments. In a vast collection of notebooks (over 5,000 pages), Leonardo meticulously detailed his research on optics, mechanics, astronomy, and anatomy. He kept his findings hidden for fear his ideas would be stolen. Had they been shared or published, they might well have changed the course of scientific discovery, for they prefigured the work of Newton, Galileo, and Kepler. Instead, after Leonardo's death, his papers were lost to the world for nearly 200 years; some were never recovered.

Using newly available documents, Michael White illuminates Leonardo's groundbreaking achievements and weaves together the elements of his life and times-his unhappy childhood, his homosexuality, his relationship with everyone from Machiavelli to Cesare Borgia to Michelangelo. Leonardo: The First Scientist restores to this Renaissance genius the place he deserves in the pantheon of modern discovery.

About this title

Review:

"This story deals almost exclusively with Leonardo the man and Leonardo the scientist," admits British science writer Michael White, who touches only lightly on da Vinci's more famous achievements as a painter. Providing an extensive analysis of Leonardo's notebooks, White argues persuasively that da Vinci (1752-1519) made important discoveries in the fields of optics and anatomy, particularly the anatomy of the eye, and "worked methodically and with scientific precision centuries ahead of his time in the areas of geology and geography." Only the notebooks' dispersal in pieces across Europe after Leonardo's death, White believes, kept him from being properly acknowledged as "the first scientist." Informative though these sections are, it's the author's multilayered portrait of da Vinci the man that really fascinates. He was intensely social and charming, gaining the friendship and patronage of many of the great Renaissance princes while enjoying the companionship of beautiful boys. Yet Leonardo could also be distrustful and defensive, frequently expressing a jaundiced view of human nature that may have originated in the stigma of his illegitimate birth and a frightening court trial on charges of sodomy when he was 23. Without indulging in overly reductive psychologizing, White suggests that da Vinci's "almost psychotic need to discover, to unravel the mystery of life" had its roots in personal experiences that taught Leonardo to be wary of his fellow man and to seek his deepest fulfillment in the life of the mind. --Wendy Smith

About the Author:

Michael White is the author of the international best-seller Stephen Hawking: A Life in Science (with John Gribbin), the award-winning Isaac Newton: the Last Sorcerer, Life Out There, and Weird Science. He is currently working on a book about scientific rivalry from Newton to Bill Gates. White lives with his wife and family near London.

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0312270267
• ISBN 13: 9780312270261
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384