Dava Sobel is an award-winning writer and former New York Times science reporter who has contributed articles to Audubon, Discover, Life and The New Yorker. She has also been a contributing editor to Harvard Magazine, writing about scientific research and the history of science.

Ms. Sobel has maintained an interest in Galileo since childhood and her latest book, Galileo's Daughter, fulfills her ambition to plumb the renaissance scientist's life and times, and to reveal his relationship with his daughter, Suor Maria Celeste, a Poor Clare nun. In researching this book, she traveled to Italy four times and translated original documents, including more than 120 letters from Suor Maria Celeste to her famed father.

Ms. Sobel's book Longitude (published by Walker & Company) became an international best-seller, and has been translated into more than twenty foreign languages. Longitude has won several awards, including the "Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award" from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, "Book of the Year" in England, "Le Prix Faubert du Coton" in France, and "Il Premio del Mare Circeo" in Italy. Also in recognition of Longitude, Ms. Sobel was made a fellow of the American Geographical Society. The PBS program NOVA produced "Lost At Sea--The Search for Longitude," a television documentary adaptation of Longitude, which aired in fall 1998, and NOVA is currently developing a television documentary of Galileo's Daughter. In summer 2000 the A&E Network will broadcast a four-hour miniseries dramatization of Longitude produced as a joint production of Granada Films and A&E and starring, among others, Jeremy Irons.

Lecture engagements have taken Ms. Sobel to speak at The Smithsonian Institution, The Explorers Club, the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, The Folger Shakespeare Library, The Los Angeles Public Library, The New York Public Library, The Royal Geographical Society (London), and BookExpo America 1998. She has appeared on numerous radio and television programs, including NPR's "All Things Considered," "Fresh Air," and "The Connection" with Christopher Lydon, as well as C-SPAN's "Booknotes", "The Today Show," and "ABC World News Tonight".

Dava Sobel lives in East Hampton, New York.