14 June

NEW - Francesco Morlacchi - composer

Umbrian popularised Italian opera in Dresden

The composer Francesco Morlacchi, who spent much of his career working for the Saxon court in Dresden and helped popularise Italian opera not only in Germany but further afield, was born on this day in 1784 in Perugia.  Morlacchi composed more than 20 operas, the most successful of which is Tebaldo e Isolina, a romantic melodrama around a love affair between members of rival families, which had its premiere in Venice in 1822.  A contemporary of Gioachino Rossini, Morlacchi had the opportunity in the same year to succeed Rossini as maestro di cappella of the royal theatres in Naples. However, he chose to remain in Dresden.  Morlacchi was born into a family of musicians. His father, Alessandro, was a violinist at Perugia’s Cattedrale di San Lorenzo, where his maternal great-uncle, Giovanni Mazzetti, was the organist.  He began composing at a young age, studying first under Mazzetti and later with the cathedral’s maestro di cappella, the Neapolitan Luigi Caruso. He furthered his education in Loreto in Marche with Niccolò Zingarelli, another Neapolitan. Eventually, he secured a place at the school of Stanislao Mattei in Bologna, where he met Rossini.  Read more…

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Giovanni Borgia - murdered son of Pope

Killing still unsolved after 500 years despite plenty of suspects

Giovanni Borgia, the brother of Cesare and Lucrezia and son of Pope Alexander VI, was murdered on this day in 1497 in Rome.  There was no shortage of possible suspects but the murder was never solved. The grief-stricken Pope launched an immediate murder inquiry, but mysteriously closed down the investigation after just one week, leading to speculation that the perpetrator could have been a member of Giovanni’s own family.  The case has fascinated historians and writers for the last 500 years and been the subject of many books, including Mario Puzo’s historical novel, The Family, and it has featured in many films and televisions programmes. Giovanni was born in Rome in either 1474 or 1476 to the then Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia and his mistress, Vanozza dei Cattanei. He is thought to have been  the eldest of the children fathered by Pope Alexander VI with his mistress, but this is disputed.  He was married to Maria Enriquez de Luna, who had been betrothed to his older half-brother, Pedro Luis, who had died before the marriage could take place.  Read more…

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Antonio Sacchini - composer

Masterpiece widely acknowledged only after tragic death

The composer Antonio Sacchini, whose operas brought him fame in England and France in the second half of the 18th century and found favour with the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, among others, was born on this day in 1730 in Florence.  His 1785 work Oedipe à Colone, which fell into the opera seria genre as opposed to the more light-hearted opera buffa, in which he also specialised, has best stood the test of time among his works, although it did not achieve popularity until after his death after initially falling victim to the political climate in the French court.  Sacchini came from humble stock. His father, Gaetano, was thought to be a cook, and it was through his work that the family moved to Naples when he was four, Gaetano having been employed by the future Bourbon King of Naples, Don Carlos, then the Duke of Parma and Piacenza.  This provided the opportunity for Sacchini to receive tuition at the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto, under the supervision of the composer Francesco Durante, where he learned the basics of composition, harmony and counterpoint, also developing impressive skills as a violinist and studying singing.  Read more…

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Salvatore Quasimodo - Nobel Prize winner

Civil engineer wrote poetry in his spare time

Salvatore Quasimodo, who was one of six Italians to have won a Nobel Prize in Literature, died on this day in 1968 in Naples.  The former civil engineer, who was working for the Italian government in Reggio Calabria when he published his first collection of poems and won the coveted and historic Nobel Prize in 1959, suffered a cerebral haemorrhage in Amalfi, in Campania, where he had gone to preside over a poetry prize.  He was taken by car to Naples but died in hospital a few hours later, at the age of 66.  He had suffered a heart attack previously during a visit to the Soviet Union.  The committee of the Swedish Academy, who meet to decide each year’s Nobel laureates, cited Quasimodo’s “lyrical poetics, which with ardent classicism expresses the tragic experiences of the life of our times". The formative experiences that shaped his literary life began when he was a child when his father, a station master in Modica, the small city in the province of Ragusa in Sicily, where Salvatore was born in 1901, was transferred in 1909 to Messina, to supervise the reorganisation of train services in the wake of the devastating earthquake of December 1908.  Read more…

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Giacomo Leopardi – poet and philosopher

The tragic life of a brilliant Italian writer

One of Italy’s greatest 19th century writers, Giacomo Leopardi, died on this day in 1837 in Naples.  A brilliant scholar and philosopher, Leopardi led an unhappy life in Recanati in the Papal States, blighted by poor health, but he left as a legacy his superb lyric poetry.  By the age of 16, Leopardi had independently mastered Greek, Latin and several modern languages and had translated many classical works. He had also written some poems, tragedies and scholarly commentaries.  He had been born deformed and excessive study made his health worse. He became blind in one eye and developed a cerebrospinal condition that was to cause him problems for the rest of his life.  He was forced to suspend his studies and, saddened by an apparent lack of concern from his parents, he poured out his feelings in poems such as the visionary work, Appressamento della morte - Approach of Death - written in 1816 in terza rima, in imitation of Petrarch and Dante.  His frustrated love for his married cousin, and the death from consumption of the young daughter of his father’s coachman, only deepened his despair. The death of the young girl inspired perhaps his greatest lyric poem, A Silvia.  Read more…

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Battle of Marengo

Napoleon works up an appetite driving out the Austrians

Napoleon was victorious in battle against the Austrians on this day in 1800 in an area near the village of Marengo, about five kilometres south of Alessandria in Piedmont.  A chicken dish named after the battle, Pollo alla Marengo, keeps the event alive by continuing to appear on restaurant menus and in cookery books.  It was an important victory for Napoleon, who effectively drove the Austrians out of Italy by forcing them to retreat.  Initially French forces had been overpowered by the Austrians and had been pushed back a few miles. The Austrians thought they had won and retired to Alessandria.  But the French received reinforcements and launched a surprise counter-attack, forcing the Austrians to retreat and to have to subsequently sign an armistice.  This sealed a political victory for Napoleon and helped him secure his grip on power.  There are various stories about the origin of the chicken dish named after the battle. Some say Napoleon ate it after his victory, while others say a restaurant chef in Paris invented it and named it after the battle in Napoleon’s honour.  There is also a story that Napoleon refused to eat before the battle but eventually came off the field with a ferocious hunger.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Borgias: History's Most Notorious Dynasty, by Mary Hollingsworth

The Borgias have become a byword for pride, lust, cruelty, avarice, splendour and venomous intrigue. An inspiration for many works of fiction, most famously Mario Puzo's The Family, they have aroused abomination and fascination in almost equal measure, while their patronage of the arts created some of the great masterpieces of the Renaissance. From the powerful, merciless Rodrigo Borgia, better known as Pope Alexander VI, to the beautiful Lucrezia and the debauched and murderous Cesare, Mary Hollingsworth's The Borgias: History's Most Notorious Dynasty, provides an account of the dynasty's dramatic rise from its Spanish roots to the heights of Renaissance society and forms a compelling tale of brutality, incest, unparalleled corruption and extortionate greed.

Mary Hollingsworth’s doctoral thesis dealt with the role of the architect in Italian Renaissance building projects and led to research on the role of the patron in the development of Renaissance art and architecture.

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Francesco Morlacchi - composer

Umbrian popularised Italian opera in Dresden

Francesco Morlacchi's work in Dresden
furthered the popularity of Italian opera

The composer Francesco Morlacchi, who spent much of his career working for the Saxon court in Dresden and helped popularise Italian opera not only in Germany but further afield, was born on this day in 1784 in Perugia.

Morlacchi composed more than 20 operas, the most successful of which is Tebaldo e Isolina, a romantic melodrama around a love affair between members of rival families, which had its premiere in Venice in 1822.

A contemporary of Gioachino Rossini, Morlacchi had the opportunity in the same year to succeed Rossini as the maestro di cappella of the royal theatres in Naples, including the Teatro di San Carlo opera house. However, he chose to remain in Dresden.

Morlacchi was born into a family of musicians. His father, Alessandro, was a violinist at Perugia’s Cattedrale di San Lorenzo, where his maternal great-uncle, Giovanni Mazzetti, was the organist.

He began composing at a young age, studying first under Mazzetti and later with the cathedral’s maestro di cappella, the Neapolitan Luigi Caruso. He furthered his education in Loreto in Marche with Niccolò Zingarelli, another Neapolitan. Eventually, he secured a place at the school of Stanislao Mattei in Bologna, where he met Rossini.

Morlacchi’s first significant success was the drama Corradino, which was staged at the Teatro Imperiale in Parma during the 1808 carnival. 

This success led to commissions from opera houses in Rome and Milan and it was another drama, Le Danaidi, which was performed at the Teatro Argentina in Rome in 1810 that attracted the attention of a music periodical in Leipzig.

A photograph of the original score of Tebaldo
e Isolina, published by Ricordi in Milan in 1822

The composer was encouraged by a singer of his acquaintance, the contralto Marietta Marcolini, to go to Dresden, where he was appointed deputy Kapellmeister in 1810. Following the success of his Raoul de Crequi at the court theatre in 1811, he was appointed music director for life.

His new duties slowed down his opera production to a degree. He was also expected to prepare much sacred music and occasional cantatas for ceremonial occasions. He was also faced with trying simultaneously to satisfy the conflicting desires of the court and those of the paying public. He was often given a hard time by the critics, who took the opportunity to attack the court’s favouring of the traditional over the innovations being introduced in German opera. 

His work in Dresden between 1816 and 1817 exemplified this in a series of operas written in the 18th century comic-style, including a Barber of Seville (1816) based on the old text set to music by Giovanni Paisiello in 1782. This contrasted sharply with Rossini’s Barber of Seville, which also debuted in 1816, in which the music was set to a more casual and progressive text by Cesare Sterbini.

Morlacchi’s personal circumstances changed in 1816 when his wife, Anna Fabrizi, whom he had married in Perugia in 1805 and who moved with him to Dresden in 1810, decided she was tired of life in Germany and returned home.  Morlacchi established a new relationship with a woman called Augusta Bauer, with whom he is thought to have had four children in addition to the son he fathered with Anna. 

Morlacchi worked on several operas with the
acclaimed 19th century librettist Felice Romani

Alongside his work for the court in Dresden, Morlacchi toured with his operatic works, including Boadicea at Teatro di San Carlo in Naples (1818), Gianni di Parigi and Donna Aurora at Teatro alla Scala in Milan (1818 and 1821).

For Teatro La Fenice in Venice, he wrote Tebaldo and Isolina (1822), Ilda d'Avenel (1824) and I Saraceni in Sicilia(1828), as well as Colombo for the inaugural season of the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa (1828). 

The libretti for I Saraceni in Sicilia and Colombo were among several written for him by Felice Romani, a poet and scholar of literature and mythology who wrote for Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini and was considered to be a librettist comparable with Pietro Metastasio and Arrigo Boito.

The opera that enjoyed the most lasting success was Tebaldo e Isolina, appreciated by the public for the libretto by Gaetano Rossi and the masterful interpretation by the singers, in particular the tenor Gaetano Crivelli and the castrato Giovanni Battista Velluti. Over the next 10 years, the opera was performed in around 40 cities in Italy and abroad.

Morlacchi’s health declined in his later years but he continued to travel and was in Naples in 1839. By 1841 he was seriously ill but attempted to journey to Italy again, apparently wishing to see his wife again in Perugia. However, the journey proved too taxing and he died while staying in a hotel in Innsbruck in October, at the age of 57. 

He was interred in Innsbruck but in January 1842, a funeral was held in Perugia cathedral that included an address by Antonio Mezzanotte, the Perugian friend to whom the composer left all his music. 

In 1874, Perugia’s Verzaro theatre was renamed after him. In 1951 the remains were moved from Innsbruck to the cathedral of Perugia.

The Fontana Maggiore sits in front of Perugia's
cathedral in Piazza IV Novembre

Travel tip:

Perugia, where Francesco Morlacchi was born and where his remains are buried in the Cattedrale di San Lorenzo, is an ancient city that sits on a high hilltop midway between Rome and Florence. In Etruscan times it was one of the most powerful cities of the period.  The capital of the Umbria region, It is also a university town with a long history, the University of Perugia having been founded in 1308.  The presence of the University for Foreigners and a number of smaller colleges gives Perugia a student population of more than 40,000.  The centre of the city, Piazza IV Novembre, which is where the cathedral is situated, has a mediaeval fountain, the Fontana Maggiore, which was sculpted by Nicolo and Giovanni Pisano.  The city’s imposing Basilica di San Domenico, built in the early 14th century also to designs by Giovanni Pisano, is the largest church in Umbria, with a distinctive 60m (197ft) bell tower and a 17th-century interior, designed by Carlo Maderno, lit by enormous stained-glass windows. The basilica contains the tomb of Pope Benedict XI, who died from poisoning in 1304.  The Teatro Morlacchi is about 300m from the Cattedrale di San Lorenzo in Piazza Francesco Morlacchi.

With a history of catastrophic fires, Venice's
Teatro La Fenice is aptly named

Travel tip:

Teatro La Fenice in Venice, for which Morlacchi wrote his most successful opera, Tebaldo and Isolina, has had a fascinating history. The theatre, in Campo San Fantin, which is not far from Piazza San Marco, was named La Fenice, the Phoenix, when it was originally built in the 1790s, to reflect the fact it was helping an opera company rise from the ashes after its previous theatre had burnt down. But in 1836, La Fenice itself was destroyed by fire, although it was quickly rebuilt. Then in 1996, when the theatre burnt down again, arson was suspected, leading to a long criminal investigation. La Fenice had to be rebuilt once more at a cost of more than 90 million euros and was not able to reopen for performances until 2003.

Also on this day:

1497: The murder of Giovanni Borgia

1730: The birth of composer Antonio Sacchini

1800: The Battle of Marengo

1837: The death of poet and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi

1968: The death of Nobel Prize-winning poet Salvatore Quasimodo

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13 June

Pope's would-be killer pardoned

Turkish gunman 'freed' but immediately detained

Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Italy’s president, signed the order granting an official pardon to Pope John Paul II’s would-be assassin, Mehmet Ali Agca, on this day in 2000.  The Turkish gunman had spent 19 years in jail after wounding the pontiff in St Peter’s Square in Rome in May 1981 but John Paul II, who had forgiven Agca from his hospital bed and visited him in prison in 1983, had been pressing the Italian government to show clemency and allow him to return to Turkey.  However, at the same time as granting him his freedom under the Italian judicial system, Ciampi also signed Agca’s extradition papers at the request of the Turkish authorities, who required him to serve the outstanding nine years of a 10-year jail sentence after being convicted in his absence of the murder of a Turkish journalist in 1978.  He was handed over to Turkish police, who escorted him onto a military flight to Istanbul airport on Tuesday night.  At the time, a Vatican statement described the Pope as "very happy" about the pardon and said that John Paul II’s satisfaction was all the greater for the pardon being carried out during the Roman Catholic Church's Holy Year.  Read more…

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Saint Anthony of Padua

Pilgrims honour the saint famous for his miracles

The feast of Saint Anthony of Padua (Sant’Antonio da Padova) is celebrated today, with thousands of people visiting the northern Italian city. Special services are held in the Basilica di Sant’Antonio before a statue of the saint is carried through the streets of Padua.  Pilgrims from all over the world visit the Basilica, to see the saint’s tomb and relics.  Anthony was born in Portugal where he became a Catholic priest and a friar of the Franciscan order. He died on 13 June, 1231 in Padova and was declared a saint by the Vatican a year after his death, which is considered a remarkably short space of time.  Anthony is one of the most loved of all the saints and his name is regularly invoked by Italians to help them recover lost items.  It is estimated that about five million pilgrims visit the Basilica every year in order to file past and touch the tomb of the Franciscan monk,who became famous for his miracles, particularly relating to lost people or things.  The magnificent basilica in Piazza del Santo is an architectural masterpiece created between the 13th and 14th centuries, later enriched with works of art by masters such as Titian, Tiepolo and the sculptor Donatello.  Read more…

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Giovanni Antonio Magini - astronomer and cartographer

Scientist laboured to produce a comprehensive atlas of Italy

Giovanni Antonio Magini, who dedicated his life to producing a detailed atlas of Italy, was born on this day in 1555 in Padua.  He also devised his own planetary theory consisting of 11 rotating spheres and invented calculating devices to help him work on the geometry of the sphere.  Magini was born in Padua and went to study philosophy in Bologna, receiving his doctorate in 1579. He then dedicated himself to astronomy and in 1582 wrote his Ephemerides coelestium motuum, a major treatise on the subject, which was translated into Italian the following year.  In 1588 Magini joined in the competition for the chair of mathematics at Bologna University and was chosen over Galileo because he was older and had more moderate views. He held the position for the rest of his life.  But his greatest achievement was the preparation of Italia, or the Atlante geografico d’Italia - the Geographical Atlas of Italy - which was printed posthumously by Magini’s son in 1620.  Although Italy as a state has existed only since 1861, the name Italia, referring to the southern part of the peninsula, may go back to the ancient Greeks. It appeared on coins thought to have been produced in the 1st century BC.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Pope John Paul II: The Biography, by Tad Szulc

Pope John Paul II was one of the pivotal figures of the last century, the spiritual head of more than one billion believers and a world statesman of immense stature and influence. Yet he remains a mystery - theologically, politically, and personally. Through unprecedented access to both the Pope himself and those close to him, veteran New York Times correspondent and award-winning author Tad Szulc delivers the definitive life story. Pope John Paul II: The Biography is a strikingly intimate portrait that highlights the Polishness that shaped the Pope's mysticism and pragmatism, while providing a behind-the-scenes look at the significant events of his public and private life, including: the inside story of the negotiations involving John Paul II, Soviet President Gorbachev and General Jaruzelski of Poland that led to Poland's and Eastern Europe's transition from communism to democracy; John Paul II's secret diplomacy, which resulted in the establishment of relations between the Holy See and Israel; the never-before-told story of how the Polish communist regime helped to 'make' Karol Wojtyla an archbishop, the key step on his road to the papacy.

Tad Szulc was a journalist, foreign policy analyst and biographer. A foreign correspondent for the New York Times for 20 years, he was the author of more than 25 books, which included his highly acclaimed biographies of Fidel Castro, and Pope John Paul II. 

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12 June

Margherita Hack – astrophysicist

TV personality made science more popular

Writer and astrophysicist Margherita Hack was born on this day in 1922 in Florence.  She studied stars by analysing the different kinds of radiation they emitted and frequently appeared on television to explain new findings in astronomy and physics.  Hack, whose father, Roberto Hack, was of Swiss origin, graduated in physics from the University of Florence in 1945. She worked at the Brera Astronomical Observatory just outside Milan and then became a professor at the University of Trieste.  She spent more than 20 years as director of the observatory in Trieste, the first woman in Italy to hold such a position. Under her leadership, the observatory became one of the foremost research centres in Italy.  Hack wrote many scientific papers and books, winning awards for her research. Her television appearances helped make science more popular with ordinary people.  Hack was also known for her strong political views and for her criticisms of the Roman Catholic Church, which she believed had an unscientific outlook.  Hack was awarded the honour of Dame Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 2012 and the asteroid 8558 Hack, discovered in 1995, was named after her.  Read more…

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Nick Gentile - mafioso

Sicilian mobster defied code of silence by publishing memoirs

The mafioso Nicola Gentile, known in the United States as Nick, who became notorious for publishing a book of memoirs that revealed the inner workings of the American Mafia as well as secrets of the Sicilian underworld, was born on this day in 1885 in Siculiana, a small town on the south coast of the Sicily, in the province of Agrigento.  Gentile’s book, Vita di Capomafia, which he wrote in conjunction with a journalist, was published in 1963 and provided much assistance to the American authorities in their fight against organised crime.   As a result Gentile was sentenced to death by the mafia council in Sicily for having broken the code of omertà, a vow of silence to which all mafiosi are expected to adhere to protect their criminal activities.  Siculiana, in fact, was a mafia stronghold, where the code was usually enforced with particular rigour.  Yet the mobsters from the city of Catania who were tasked with carrying out the sentence declined to do so, for reasons that have not been explained. In the event, Gentile died in Siculiana in 1966 of natural causes, having spent his last years as an old, sick man who appeared to have very little money and was kept alive by the kindness of neighbours.  Read more…

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Edda “Edy” Campagnoli - model, TV star and businesswoman

Glamorous blonde who married top footballer

The model, television star and later businesswoman Edda “Edy” Campagnoli was born on this day in 1934 in Milan.  Campagnoli was a famous face in Italy in the 1950s. She became a celebrity as the glamorous assistant of popular presenter Mike Bongiorno on a prime time quiz show, and then married the AC Milan and Italy goalkeeper Lorenzo Buffon.  For a while, she and Buffon - a cousin of the grandfather of another famous Italian goalkeeper, World Cup-winner Gianluigi Buffon - were one of Italy’s most high-profile couples.  Campagnoli, blonde with blue eyes and a curvaceous figure, first attracted attention as a catwalk model in the city of her birth and it would be her looks that provided a passport to stardom. In 1954, the director Luchino Visconti decided she would be the perfect Venus in his interpretation of Gaspare Spontini’s opera La vestale, giving her the rare distinction of appearing on stage at Milan's great opera house, Teatro alla Scala, alongside the superstar soprano Maria Callas. A year later, she made her television debut in an afternoon show on the fledgling Rai network, where she was quickly spotted by the producers of Lascia o raddoppia?, a new quiz show.  Read more…

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Charles Emmanuel II - Duke of Savoy

Ruler who was notorious for massacre of Protestant minority

Charles Emmanuel II, who was Duke of Savoy for almost his whole life, died on this day in 1675 in Turin.  His rule was notorious for his persecution of the Valdesi – a Christian Protestant movement widely known as the Waldenses that originated in 12th century France, whose base was on the Franco-Italian border.  In 1655, he launched an attack on the Valdesi that turned into a massacre so brutal that it sent shockwaves around Europe and prompted the English poet, John Milton, to write the sonnet On the Late Massacre in Piedmont.  The British political leader Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, proposed to send the British Navy if the massacre and subsequent attacks were not halted, and raised funds for helping the Waldensians.  More positively, Charles Emmanuel II was responsible for improving commerce and creating wealth in the Duchy. He was a driver in developing the port of Nice and building a road through the Alps towards France.  He also reformed the army so that it did not rely on mercenaries, forming five Piedmontese regiments and reviving the cavalry, as well as introducing a standardised uniform.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Astrophysics: A Very Short Introduction, by James Binney

Astrophysics is the physics of the stars, and more widely the physics of the Universe. It enables us to understand the structure and evolution of planetary systems, stars, galaxies, interstellar gas, and the cosmos as a whole.  In Astrophysics: A Very Short Introduction, the leading astrophysicist James Binney shows how the field of astrophysics has expanded rapidly in the past century, with vast quantities of data gathered by telescopes exploiting all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, combined with the rapid advance of computing power, which has allowed increasingly effective mathematical modelling. He illustrates how the application of fundamental principles of physics - the consideration of energy and mass, and momentum - and the two pillars of relativity and quantum mechanics, has provided insights into phenomena ranging from rapidly spinning millisecond pulsars to the collision of giant spiral galaxies. This is a clear, rigorous introduction to astrophysics for those keen to cut their teeth on a conceptual treatment involving some mathematics.

James Binney is a British astrophysicist. He is a professor of physics at the University of Oxford and former head of the Sub-Department of Theoretical Physics as well as an Emeritus Fellow of Merton College. The author of more than 200 articles and several books, he has won multiple awards, including the 2023 Isaac Newton Medal.

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