Galileo’s Finger: The ten great ideas of science by Peter Atkins, Oxford University Press, £20, ISBN 0198606648 Reviewed by Robert Matthews
IN 1737, the Italian antiquary Anton Francesco Gori gained access to the 95-year-old corpse of Galileo Galilei and removed the middle finger of the venerated scientist’s right hand. This bizarre relic is kept in the Museum of the History of Science in Florence and is labelled with a lyrical inscription about how this finger pointed up to the heavens and revealed new wonders. Peter Atkins, a professor of chemistry at the University of Oxford, argues that the lifting of…
