Among them are the astronomer Maria Mitchell, who paved the way for women in science the sculptor Harriet Hosmer, who did the same in art the journalist and literary critic Margaret Fuller, who sparked the feminist movement and the poet Emily Dickinson.Įmanating from these lives are larger questions about the measure of a good life and what it means to leave a lasting mark of betterment on an imperfect world: Are achievement and acclaim enough for happiness? Is genius? Is love? Weaving through the narrative is a set of peripheral figures - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman - and a tapestry of themes spanning music, feminism, the history of science, the rise and decline of religion, and how the intersection of astronomy, poetry, and transcendentalist philosophy fomented the environmental movement. Photo: Pantheon Books On the first night of October in 1847, 29-year-old. She she holds out, with great care, for us to see, what is sweet and tender in the hearts of these greatest of minds. Stretching between these figures is a cast of artists, writers, and scientists - mostly women, mostly queer - whose public contribution have risen out of their unclassifiable and often heartbreaking private relationships to change the way we understand, experience, and appreciate the universe. Figuring by Maria Popova (Pantheon 30 578 pages) brings to life female innovators in science, literature and art. Maria Popova is a scientist of human hearts. Figuring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries - beginning with the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, and ending with the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, who catalyzed the environmental movement.

Maria popova figuring review