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Chasing Venus
How Science Turned Global in the Eighteenth Century
- Author: Andrea Wulf
- Category: Non-fiction Narrative Science
- Publisher: Heinemann (UK), Knopf (US)
- Pub date: 10 May 2012
- Length: 336 pages
About Chasing Venus
Wulf’s flair for storytelling is combined with scholarship, brio and a charmingly airy style
- NEW YORK TIMES on THE BROTHER GARDENERS
CHASING VENUS centres around an extraordinary period in Enlightenment history, when scientists from nations all around the world conducted what might be described as the first ever truly international scientific collaboration. It was the last year of the 1760s and for months the world’s scientific community had been electrified with excitement: in June the planet Venus would pass between the Earth and the Sun for only the second time in over a hundred years – a phenomenon that wouldn’t be repeated until the late nineteenth century, and one that would allow for the first ever time an accurate calculation of the relative distance of the planetary bodies in our solar system.
The Transit would afford science its first understanding of the dimensions of the universe. For those obsessed with such a grand prize, the catch was that this would require triangulated data to be compiled from various exact points dotted all around the four corners of the globe – all taken simultaneously during the short
period of the actual Transit. This was no mean feat to mount in the eighteenth century.
In CHASING VENUS, critically acclaimed historian Andrea Wulf tells this fascinating quest through the stories of a small group of people from all around the world, each in their own way obsessed with the Transit and with wanting to contribute to our understanding of the universe. Such as the story of Guillaume-Joseph-Hyacinthe-Jean-Baptiste Le Gentil. Le Gentil had quit his post at the Paris Observatory nine years earlier in order to study the first of the two passes (in 1761) from Pondicherry on the Indian Subcontinent… only to have his ships attacked, then wrecked by a Hurricane, to find himself stranded in Mauritius, and then, on nearing his destination, to be told that the British had captured the town and that it would be too hazardous to land. Instead of going back and risking the same voyage twice more (to return in 1769) Le Gentil decided to remain there for eight years in order to await the next Transit. And yet, when it occurred, clouds drifted across the sky and he was unable to see anything at all.
Rich with tales of obsession, and featuring pirates, plagues, amateur astronomers – even Catherine the Great – CHASING VENUS will be a wonderfully told and vibrant history.
About the Author
Andrea Wulf was born in India and moved to Germany as a child. She lives in Britain where she trained as a design historian at the Royal College of Art and is now a full-time writer. She is the co-author (with Emma Gieben-Gamal) of THIS OTHER EDEN: Seven Great Gardens and 300 Years of English History (Little Brown 2005). In 2008, her book THE BROTHER GARDENERS: Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession (William Heinemann) was published and longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2008. She is currently working on her new book about the American founding fathers which will be published by Knopf in 2011.
She has written for the Wall Street Journal, Sunday Times, Financial Times, The Garden, Kew Magazine, and regularly reviews for several newspapers, including the Guardian, Mail on Sunday and the Times Literary Supplement. She lectures widely to large audiences including the Royal Geographical Society, Royal Society and Chelsea Physic Garden in Britain as well as the Academy of Natural Sciences, the International Center for Jefferson Studies (Monticello) and the U.S. Botanic Garden in the United States. She has also talked at major prestigious literary festivals including the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Hay Literary Festival and Cheltenham Literary Festival. She is a regular contributor to BBC radio and television.