Gabriella Bernardi - Böcker

This book is the first to provide a comprehensive, readily understandable report on the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission that will meet the needs of a general audience.

This book highlights the different aspects of the research project “E4C Horizon 2020 European Project” aimed at fighting the coronavirus by combining the best supercomputing resources and artificial intelligence with state-of-the-art experimental facilities up through clinical validation.Coronavirus disease has become an important public issue across the globe since December 2019. There is an urgent need to develop potent anti-COVID-19 agents for the prevention of the outbreak and stop viral infections.To this aim, a public–private consortium composed by European and national infrastructures, center of excellence, universities, and a pharmaceutical company started the E4C Horizon 2020 EuropeanProject: Its core idea was to use the EXaSCale smArt pLatform Against paThogEns (EXSCALATE) supercomputing platform for a process known as “drug repurposing”, namely to identify the most promising safe in man drugs for immediate treatment of the already infected population and then novel pan-coronavirus inhibitors to address future emergencies.This ambitious goal exploited a “chemical library” of 500 billion molecules, thanks to a processing capacity of more than 3 million molecules per second, made available by the computing power of the EXSCALATE platform.

Ispirato alle principali astronome menzionate nella poesia di Siv Cedering "Letter from Caroline Herschel" alle sue "sorelle perdute da tempo, dimenticate nei libri che registrano la nostra scienza", questo libro racconta la vita di venticinque scienziate, con un focus particolare su astronome e matematiche. Ogni biografia è presentata come un "fascicolo personale", che colloca la scienziata nel suo contesto storico, documenta le sue scoperte più significative, svela curiosità e raccoglie citazioni a lei dedicate. Le protagoniste sono figure emblematiche di un mondo a lungo trascurato, tra cui Ipazia di Alessandria, Ildegarda di Bingen, Elisabetta Hevelius e Maria Gaetana Agnesi. Il libro attraversa circa 4000 anni di storia, dall’antica En HeduAnna, principessa accadica e una delle prime astronome riconosciute, fino all'alba dell’astronomia moderna, con Caroline Herschel e Mary Somerville. Pensato per chiunque voglia scoprire le vicende di donne straordinarie che, dall'antichità al XIX secolo, hanno lasciato un segno indelebile nella scienza, spesso sfidando le convenzioni di un mondo dominato dagli uomini.

Taking inspiration from Siv Cedering’s poem in the form of a fictional letter from Caroline Herschel that refers to “my long, lost sisters, forgotten in the books that record our science”, this book tells the lives of twenty-five female scientists, with specific attention to astronomers and mathematicians.

This book offers a fascinating account of the life and scientific achievements of Giovanni Domenico Cassini, or Cassini I, the most famous astronomer of his time, who is remembered today especially for his observations of the rings and satellites of Saturn and his earlier construction of the great meridian line in the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna. The various stages of his life are recounted in an engaging style, from his early childhood in Perinaldo and his time at the famous Jesuit College in Genoa, to his later experiences in Bologna and Paris. The emphasis, however, is on the scientific side of his life. The book explores his impressive body of work in diverse fields while also drawing attention to the international character of his endeavors, the rigor of his research, and his outstanding management skills, which combined to make him an early embodiment of the “European scientist.” It was also these abilities that gained him the attention of the most powerful king in Europe, Louis XIV of France (the “Sun King”), under the auspices of whom he set up the Paris Observatory in 1671. He would go on to serve as Director of the Observatory, where he would make the majority of his scientific discoveries, for the rest of his life.