In a conversation recently, a student commented something like, “At first I couldn’t recall the title of Biagioli’s book. All I could think of was Galileo Courtesan.”[1] His remark prompted me to wonder what would scholarship look like if written as mid–20th-century pulp fiction. Maybe something like this:

I would give anything to stumble across a book like this in some used bookstore. Does anybody know of trashy pulp fiction that centers on a significant person from the history of science? Anyone?
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While not an exact quotation, it’s close enough. I should add, this was (and still is) a smart student. ↩