September Meeting

The speaker for the September meeting of The Skyscrapers is Dava Sobel. She is a renowned author who writes popular expositions of science topics. She graduated from the Bronx High School of Science and Binghamton University. She is currently the Joan Leiman Jacobson Visiting Nonfiction Writer at Smith College in Northampton Mass. and is researching her next book, “The Glass Universe”, at the Harvard College Observatory. Dava is an avid eclipse chaser and has seen eight total solar eclipses. Her books include “Longitude”,” A More Perfect Heaven”, and “Galileo’s Daughter”. If you own any of her books please remember to bring them so Dava can sign them.

Dava’s topic for our meeting will be “Longitude: The true story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time”. The book describes John Harrison’s decades long effort in the eighteenth century to convince the British Admiralty to adopt his chronometer as the method to determine longitude at sea and to award him the “Longitude Prize”. The topic is currently special because we are celebrating the 300th anniversary of the Admiralty establishing the prize. “Longitude” was awarded the 1997 British Book of the Year in 1997.

Please note the meeting will be held at the Scituate Community Center, same time 7:00 PM. And as always please bring a dessert to share.