Dava Sobel

Dava Sobel
Sobel speaking at a Yale event in 2007
Born	(1947-06-15) June 15, 1947 (age 69) The Bronx, New York City
Education	The Bronx High School of Science Binghamton University

Dava Sobel (born June 15, 1947,The Bronx, New York) is an American writer of popular expositions of scientific topics. Her books include Longitude, about English clockmaker John Harrison, and Galileo's Daughter, about Galileo's daughter Maria Celeste, and The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars.

Sobel was born on June 15, 1947 in the Bronx, New York City. She graduated from The Bronx High School of Science and Binghamton University. She wrote Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time in 1995. The story was made into a television movie, of the same name by Charles Sturridge and Granada Film in 1999, and was shown in the United States by A&E.

Her book Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love was nominated for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.

She holds honorary doctor of letters degrees from the University of Bath, and Middlebury College, Vermont, both awarded in 2002.

Sobel made her first foray into teaching at the University of Chicago as the Vare Writer-in-Residence in the winter of 2006. She taught a one-quarter seminar on writing about science.