Dr. O’Donoghue, who was raised Roman Catholic, is the author of “The Sky Is Not a Ceiling: An Astronomer’s Faith,” in which she describes how she lost and then rediscovered God “in the vastness, the weirdness, the abundance, the seeming nonsensicalness, and even the violence of this incredible universe.”

He touched the controller hanging from the belt around his waist. His hoverchair rose in the corner and glided over to him, positioning itself at his side.

A small, nondescript Northeastern town bound by a chain of frozen lakes in midwinter, Framingham is nonetheless an iconic place writ large in the history of medicine.

Father Omnipotent, our Lord and only Redeemer, / […] with thy grace my ſpirit endow: […]