Leonardo Da Vinci by Kathleen Krull

PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
    Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
     
    First published in the United States of America by Viking, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2005
Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2008
     
    Text copyright © Kathleen Krull, 2005
    Illustrations copyright © Boris Kulikov, 2005
All rights reserved
     
    THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE VIKING EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Krull, Kathleen.
Giants of science : Leonardo da Vinci / by Kathleen Krull ; illustrated by Boris Kulikov.
p. cm.—(Giants of science)
Europe, 1452 : so many things unknown!—The outsider—The desire to know is natural—Nothing
but full toilets—Lying on a feather mattress—The universe stands open—Miserable mortals, open
your eyes!—The fabulous notebooks—The notebooks, part 2—I want to work miracles!—I will
continue—What happened next?—Leonardo’s notebooks and where they are now.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
    eISBN : 978-1-101-09869-1
    1. Leonardo, da Vinci, 1452-1519—Juvenile literature. 2. Scientists—Italy—Biography—Juvenile
literature. 3. Science, Renaissance—Juvenile literature. 4. Leonardo, da Vinci, 1452-1519—
Influence—Juvenile literature. 5. Leonardo, da Vinci, 1452-1519—Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc.—
Juvenile literature.
I. Kulikov, Boris, 1966- II. Title. III. Giants of science (Viking Press)
Q143.L5 K’.2—dc22 2005007244
     
     
     
     
     
    The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume
any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
    http://us.penguingroup.com

For Jane O’ Connor—K. K.

Acknowledgments
    For help with research, the author thanks
Robert Burnham and Patricia Laughlin,
Patricia Daniels, Dr. Lawrence M. Principe,
Susan Cohen, Gary Brewer, Dr. Helen Foster James
and Bob James, Sheila Cole, Janet Pascal, Gery Greer,
and Bob Ruddick.

INTRODUCTION
“If I have seen further [than other people] it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”
    —Isaac Newton, 1675
     
     
     
    WHERE DO SCIENTISTS’ brilliant ideas and discoveries come from?
    Well, nobody lives in a vacuum, and ideas don’t come out of nowhere. Even Isaac Newton (a giant of science if ever there was one) depended on what great thinkers before him had figured out in order to “see further,” to make discoveries of his own.
    People hear the name Leonardo da Vinci, and they think “artistic genius of the Renaissance.” And sure, he created the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper , two of the world’s most famous paintings.
    Yet for thirty years—the whole last half of his life—he spent most of his time doing research in fields ranging from astronomy to anatomy, zoology to geology, and botany to paleontology.
    “Scientist” wasn’t even a word Leonardo would have known—people didn’t start using the term until the early nineteenth century. (He might have called himself a natural philosopher—someone who wants to make sense of the natural world.) But he would have known the Latin word scientia , which means