J. L. Heilbron introduces Francesco Bianchini, reputed to be the greatest Italian of his time, whose life embodied the extraordinary meeting of science, culture, history, and politics in early modern Europe. From the Jacobite cause to Newton's theories to the zodiac, Heilbron paints a glorious portrait of a world of excitement and discovery.

J.L. Heilbron is Professor of History and the Vice Chancellor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as an Honorary Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford. He writes about the history of the physical sciences and their wider cultural context from the 17th to the 20th centuries, and has published the definitive biography of Galileo (OUP, 2010), as well as The History of Physics: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2018), Niels Bohr: A Very Short Introduction, (OUP, 2020), and The Ghost of Galileo (OUP, 2021). Heilbron's work has won several prizes and brought him honorary doctorates from multiple universities.

• Prologue


• 1: A Galilean Education


• 2: Universal History


• 3: Jubilee Line


• 4: Republican of Letters


• 5: In Partibus


• 6: Jacobite Adventures


• 7: Digging into History


• 8: From Mars to Venus


• 9: Exeunt


• Notes


• Works Cited


• Picture Credits


• Index