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In 1707 a British fleet ran aground off the Isles of Scilly, and seven years later the government offered a prize to anyone who could find longitude at sea. Dava Sobel’s Longitude (1995) tells how an eighteenth-century clockmaker, John Harrison, set out to win it. For Galileo’s Daughter (1999) she translated the 124 surviving letters that Suor Maria Celeste wrote to her father from the Convent of San Matteo in Arcetri, where she had lived since she was 13. Then came the women of the Harvard Observatory in The Glass Universe (2016), and the at least 45 women who worked in Marie Curie’s laboratory in The Elements of Marie Curie (2024). The ten writers below share her method and her subject: science told through letters, archives and lives, and the people standing just outside the famous name.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Popular science · History of astronomy · Updated October 2026
Quick answer
If you love Dava Sobel, start with Andrea Wulf, whose Chasing Venus (2012) follows the race to measure the heavens. For the women behind the calculations, read Margot Lee Shetterly’s Hidden Figures (2016), published the same year as The Glass Universe, and for Marie Curie written by her own daughter, Ève Curie’s Madame Curie (1937). Further down is a Harvard historian who thinks the heroic story of science is too simple.
10 authors like Dava Sobel
Where to start if you loved Dava Sobel
If you loved Longitude, read Andrea Wulf.
Chasing Venus (2012): eighteenth-century astronomers racing to measure the heavens.
If you loved The Glass Universe, read Margot Lee Shetterly.
Hidden Figures (2016): the women mathematicians behind the American space programme.
If you loved The Elements of Marie Curie, read Ève Curie.
Madame Curie (1937): her mother’s life, written by her younger daughter.
If you loved The Planets, read Carl Sagan.
Pale Blue Dot (1994): the solar system and our place in it.
If you want more Sobel, read Galileo’s Daughter next.
Then Letters to Father (2001), her translations of Maria Celeste’s letters with the Italian on facing pages, and A More Perfect Heaven (2011), on Copernicus.
Frequently asked questions about authors like Dava Sobel
Who writes like Dava Sobel?
Andrea Wulf, Margot Lee Shetterly and Ève Curie are the closest. Wulf writes eighteenth-century science as an international race, Shetterly the women behind the calculations, and Ève Curie the life of her mother, Marie Curie.
What should I read after Longitude?
Andrea Wulf’s Chasing Venus (2012), another eighteenth-century race to measure the heavens, and Simon Winchester’s The Perfectionists (2018), a history of precision engineering.
What should I read after The Glass Universe?
Margot Lee Shetterly’s Hidden Figures (2016), about the African American women mathematicians who worked at NASA.
Is Longitude historically accurate?
Historians of science have criticised it for casting heroes and villains, for presenting the astronomical and timekeeping methods as rivals rather than complementary, and for simplifying how invention works. Steven Shapin’s The Scientific Revolution (1996) is a short introduction to that more sceptical view.
Does Dava Sobel have a new book?
No new book has been announced as of October 2026. Her most recent is The Elements of Marie Curie (2024), about Curie and the at least 45 women who worked in her laboratory.
Which Dava Sobel book should I read first?
Longitude (1995) is the best known and the easiest way in. Galileo’s Daughter (1999), a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Biography, is the richer book.
Sources
- Dava Sobel — Wikipedia
- Longitude (book) — Wikipedia
- The Untold Story of Marie Curie’s Network of Female Scientists — Scientific American
- Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds — Wikipedia
List last reviewed 31 October 2026.
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