Newswise — Science writer Dava Sobel will present “Galileo and the International Year of Astronomy” on Wednesday, October 28, at 11 a.m. in the Eynon Ballroom of the Chamberlain Student Center. The event is part of the President’s Lecture Series.
Sobel is a former New York Times science reporter, international speaker, commentator and award-winning author who spent 30 years as a science journalist. She has written for many magazines, including Audubon, Discover, Life and The New Yorker, and she also has been a contributing editor to Harvard Magazine and Omni. She wrote the international bestseller and multiple award-winner Longitude, Galileo's Daughter and The Planets and co-authored five books, including Is Anyone Out There? with astronomer Frank Drake.
Sobel received the 2001 Individual Public Service Award from the National Science Board for fostering awareness of science and technology, the Boston Museum of Science’s Bradford Washburn Award for contributions toward public understanding of science, the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers’ Harrison Medal in recognition of her contribution to increasing awareness of that field and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific’s Klumpke-Roberts Award for increasing awareness of astronomy.
In 2006, she served as the Robert Vare Nonfiction Writer in Residence at the University of Chicago, where she taught a seminar in science writing while pursuing research for a stage play about 16th-century astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, which was commissioned by Manhattan Theatre Club through the Alfred P. Sloan Initiative and supported by a Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Her work has been featured on or inspired productions for PBS and A&E, and she has appeared on National Public Radio programs, C-SPAN and more. The author has lectured at The Smithsonian Institution, The Explorers' Club, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, The Folger Shakespeare Library, The New York Public Library, The Hayden Planetarium and The Royal Geographical Society (London).
Sobel earned a bachelor of arts from the State University of New York at Binghamton and honorary doctor of letters degrees from the University of Bath, in England, and Middlebury College, Vermont.
The event is free and open to the public.
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