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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS®LS2¯



	In the three years it has taken me to complete this book, I've benefited from the help of many institutions and people on two continents and in two and sometimes three languages. In this country my research home was the U.S. Naval Observatory Library, a remote and difficult-to-reach facility behind electronic sensors and secret servicemen, lying, as it does, about a hundred yards from the Vice President's mansion in Washington. Its inaccessibility was a great boon to this book, for I had no difficulty in capturing the full attention of the fine librarians, Brenda Corbin and Gregory Shelton. Meanwhile, Silvana de Luca, my neighbor in Bethesda, built my command of the Italian language with exuberance and good cheer as she prepared me for my research trips to Italy and helped with translations. And Wallace Ragan, the Latin teacher at St. Albans School, helped with Latin translation, especially Galileo's lectures on the nova of 1604. 
	To my delight, I was to find that the Italians were truly curious about an American writer who dared to take on the life of so great an Italian, even though they recognized, in their mind if not in their heart, that Galileo belongs to the world. What if an Italian dared to write the life of George Washington, they would ask with the glint of a smile. In this most Catholic of countries where Galileo is often in the news and where his face peers out at them from their constantly devaluating 2,000 lire note, they welcomed an outside perspective.
	 During my first research trip abroad, in the summer of 1991, I met the writer, Idanna Pucci, whose noble lineage traces back to the eleventh century when her family competed with the Medici. From the outset, as she became a friend and colleague, Idanna was unfailing in her enthusiasm, partly, she said, because, after long sojourns to far corners of the earth, my Galileo project brought her back to her Tuscan roots.  Through her, I developed my friendship with Cosimo Mazzoni and Antonella Berardi. From their gracious and lively estate in Fiesole, not far from the precipice where Leonardo da Vinci is supposed to have tested his flying machines, they helped in countless ways. While in Florence, I benefited greatly from the ideas of Dr. Franco Pacini, the director of the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory, Paolo Galluzzi, the director of the History of Science Museum, John Spike, the art historian, and Charles Cecil, the American painter.
	I began to refer to my Italian trips as ``making the Galileo swing.'' Normally, the circuit started in Rome, and indeed, the writing of the book began there, when I spent a productive month at the American Academy in Rome in January-February, 1992. Under the guidance of the then-director, Joseph Connors, and in the spirited company of my fellow writers and scholars, like Alexander Stille and Sarah McPhee, I got my Roman bearings and my introductions.
	 At the Vatican, Archbishop John Foley, the communciations director for the Holy See (whose formal title is President of the Pontifical Council for Social Communciations and who is a graduate of the Columbia Journalism School) was welcoming. For his cooperation, he asked of me only two things in return: that I be accurate and fair. In turn, Father Leonard Boyle, the spry Irish priest who is the director of the Vatican Library and expert in all things from Dante to the Washington Redskins, was a pleasure to know. I treasure my memory of walking the long corridors of the stacks and drinking capuchino with him in the sculpted grotto which serves as the Library's cafe. Father Josef Metzler, the exacting director of the Vatican Archives, was also unfailingly responsive to my requests, including my desire to see the heavily-guarded original record of Galileo's trial. This cordial openness, along with the splendor of the frescoed reading rooms, made my research at the Vatican one of the most memorable experiences of my writing life.
	At the Vatican Observatory at Castelgandolfo, south of Rome, I spent many interesting hours in conversation with the Pope's Jesuit astronomers, George Coyne and Martin McCarthy. Father Coyne had been central to the 13 year reconsideration of the Galileo case, and I appreciated his honesty about that process. At a bishops conference on Galileo in Castelgandolfo, I met Richard Westfall, the Galileo specialist from Indiana, who had come to instruct the Catholic bishops about Galileo, even though he is an elder in his Protestant church in Bloomington. His insights both in conversation and in writing have informed this work.
	From Rome, I would travel to Florence to spend days in the National Library and at the Institute for the History of Science, and from there make my side-trips to Pisa. In Pisa, Roberto Sonnini, a journalist at ®MDUL¯Il Terreno®MDNM¯, was my guide and companion. He made it possible for me to be on top of the Tower of Pisa in April 1993 when physicists recreated Galileo's gravity experiments by dropping balls of various eights and densities.
	The third matrix for Galileo study is, of course, Padua and Venice. In the summer of 1992, I spent three weeks in these splendid cities as the guest of Paolo Palmeri, an anthropologist at the University of Padua. As Professor Palmeri and Alberto Pizzati, an architect and restauranteur, looked out for my needs, I am grateful to three individuals for their research assistance: Father Claudio Bellinati, a true Galileo expert and the archivist of the Episcopal Curia, Professor Marisa Milani, a professor of literature at the University of Padua, and Giampaolo Seguso, whose father, Archimede Seguso, is the most famous glassmaker in Murano. It was also in Padua that I met Dr. Thomas B. Settle, who has spent thirty years studying Galileo and who is now engaged in recreating some of Galileo's early experiments. 
	Towards the end of the writing, I was fortunate to have the perspectives of a distinguished and diverse group of scholars. These are my advisors for the forthcoming PBS television series on Galileo: Owen Gingerich, Ernan McMullin, Anthony Grafton, Liba Taub, Kenneth Manning, Berrien Moore III, Paul Knappenberger, Jr., Riccardo Giacconi, and Jehane Kuhn. I am grateful for their thoughts and encouragement.
	Finally, I thank James Devereaux, S.J., a long time friend and former colleague at the University of North Carolina, a Shakespearean scholar, and a former provincial of the Jesuit Order. He read the manuscript and provided me with many helpful comments.
	   	       
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					James Reston, Jr.
					Chevy Chase, Md. 
					October 1993