Linda Hall Library Announces Fall Lecture Series Featuring Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author & Historian David McCullough on October 2
Kansas City, Missouri (PRWEB) August 29, 2014 -- The Linda Hall Library Fall Lecture Series will transport attendees to the Panama Canal, tropical reefs and outer space, educating and entertaining along the way. As the world's foremost independent research library devoted to science, engineering and technology, the Library has secured such notable speakers as double Pulitzer Prize-winner and best-selling author David McCullough.
Of the seven lectures in the series, four will pertain to the Panama Canal. The Library this year is celebrating the Canal’s 1914 opening. Its centennial exhibition —The Land Divided, The World United: Building the Panama Canal — features more than 100 selected artifacts from the Panama Canal’s construction that haven’t been accessible to the public in nearly 80 years and runs through December 31, 2014.
Each Linda Hall Library Fall Lecture Series event is free and open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis. Online registration at http://www.lindahall.org/events/ and e-tickets are required. The Library, located at 5109 Cherry Street in Kansas City, will host all of the series except for McCullough’s presentation, which will be held at Unity Temple on the Plaza. Make plans now to attend one or more of the following lectures (more details on following pages):
• September 10 – Feather Wings, Leather Wings: Victorian Geology and the Moral Hierarchy of Deep Time with Caitlin Silberman, PhD candidate from the University of Wisconsin who is at the Linda Hall Library on a two-month fellowship
• September 18 – The Panama Canal Watershed: Science, Commerce and Sustainability with Dr. Jefferson Hall, a scientist and forest ecologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama
• October 2 – Building the Panama Canal with David McCullough – historian, Pulitzer Prize-winner and best-selling author
• October 16 – Once in a Century Opportunity: Geology and Paleontology of the Panama Canal with Dr. Bruce MacFadden, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History and project director of the Panama Canal Project Partnerships for International Research and Education
• October 28 – Tropical Deep Reefs: Exploring the Underexplored with Dr. Carole Baldwin, research zoologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
• November 11 – You Are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes with Chris Hadfield, former space shuttle astronaut and International Space Station commander
• December 4 – American Medicine and the Panama Canal: Miasmas, Mosquitoes and Malaria with Dr. Enrique Chaves, a clinical professor and pediatric neurologist at the University of Kansas Medical Center
Wednesday, September 10, 2014 (3 p.m., Linda Hall Library)
Feather Wings, Leather Wings: Victorian Geology and the Moral Hierarchy of Deep Time
E-tickets are available here.
Caitlin Silberman, a PhD candidate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison is at the Linda Hall Library on a two-month fellowship. Her research project, “I Believe We Shall Be Crows:” Thinking with Birds in British Art and Visual Culture, 1840 – 1900, examines anthropomorphic imagery in art and science.
Narratives in which membranous, leather-winged demons or dragons face off against feather-winged angels and heroes are hardly original to the Victorians. However, discoveries of fossil pterosaurs (flying reptiles) and Jurassic birds in the nineteenth century opened up new spaces for wings to perform their cultural work. In this presentation, Silberman argues that the cultural connotations attached to different types of wings conditioned the framing of flying creatures by early anatomists, geologist, and paleontologists. Further, paleontological restorations that contrast leather-winged, reptilian pterosaurs with ancient birds like Archaeopteryx illuminate nineteenth-century British perspectives on progress, evolution, and humanity's place in nature.
Thursday, September 18, 2014 (7 – 8 p.m., Linda Hall Library)
The Panama Canal Watershed: Science, Commerce and Sustainability
E-tickets are available here.
Dr. Jefferson Hall, a scientist and forest ecologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, leads a 750,000-acre smart reforestation experiment in the Panama Canal watershed area. The operation of the Panama Canal depends on a supply of fresh water. Dr. Hall will discuss how the state of watershed areas in Panama and across the tropics reflects a global competition for land, water and all of the goods and services demanded by a growing population.
Dr. Hall earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology from Miami University as well as a master of tropical forest science degree and a Ph.D. in tropical forest ecology from Yale University.
Thursday, October 2, 2014 (6:30 – 7:30 p.m., Unity Temple, 707 W. 47th Street)
Building the Panama Canal
E-tickets are available here.
David McCullough – historian, Pulitzer Prize-winner and best-selling author – will speak about the most ambitious and costly construction effort ever mounted anywhere on earth when work began on the Panama Canal in 1914. McCullough will relay like no one else can the colossal courage in the face of extreme diversity, mixed with both massive failure and extraordinary success that characterized the Canal’s creation. The Panama Canal was an unprecedented work of engineering and changed history in more ways than are commonly understood. Its story illustrates that history is far more than politics and war.
McCullough is widely acclaimed as a master of the art of narrative history. He has twice won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. He also earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award.
His most recent book, “The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris,” the number-one New York Times best seller, has been called “dazzling,” “an epic of ideas … history to be savored.” His previous work, “1776,” has been acclaimed as “a classic,” while “John Adams,” published in 2001, remains one of the most praised and widely read American biographies of all time.
McCullough’s other books include “The Johnstown Flood,” “The Great Bridge,” “The Path between the Seas,” “Mornings on Horseback,” “Brave Companions” and “Truman.” His work has been translated and published in 15 countries, and more than 10 million copies are in print. As may be said of few writers, none of his books has ever been out of print.
McCullough graduated with honors in English literature from Yale University. He is an avid reader, traveler and devoted painter with lifelong interests in art and architecture.
Thursday, October 16, 2014 (7 – 8 p.m., Linda Hall Library)
Once in a Century Opportunity: Geology and Paleontology of the Panama Canal
E-tickets are available here.
Dr. Bruce MacFadden, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, will talk about new fossil discoveries unearthed in the current expansion sites of the Panama Canal, which is taking place at a scale not seen since the original excavations 100 years ago. Dr. McFadden’s team of international scientists, supported by the National Science Foundation, is seeking to advance knowledge of the extinct faunas and flora of the ancient Neotropoics based on new fossil discoveries along the Canal.
On the University of Florida faculty since 1977, MacFadden teaches in both the biology and geology departments. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and his masters of philosophy and Ph.D. in geology from Columbia University.
Tuesday, October 28, 2014 (7 – 8 p.m., Linda Hall Library)
Tropical Deep Reefs: Exploring the Underexplored
E-tickets are available here.
Dr. Carole Baldwin, research zoologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, will speak on the Deep Reef Observation Project (DROP). Marine scientists with the multidisciplinary Smithsonian project are exploring previously inaccessible, deep Caribbean reefs through submersible diving as low as 1,000 feet. DROP research is expanding our knowledge of deep reefs, including the diversity of life they harbor, how they change over space and time, and what role they may play in the survival of shallow reefs above.
Dr. Baldwin is a well-respected authority on marine biology, especially tropical-marine and deep-sea fish. She has published dozens of scientific articles, and her work includes the discovery of new fish species in Belize, Tobago, Cook Islands, Australia, El Salvador and the Galápagos Islands.
She serves on the board of directors of Washington’s National Aquarium and most recently served as a curator of the Sant Ocean Hall at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Dr. Baldwin earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from James Madison University, a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston and a Ph.D. in marine science from the College of William and Mary.
Tuesday, November 11, 2014 (7 – 8 p.m., Linda Hall Library)
You Are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes
E-tickets are available here.
Chris Hadfield, former space shuttle astronaut and International Space Station commander, will discuss his new book, “You Are Here.” The planetary photo tour encapsulates Hadfield’s view of our world as it appears from space. In the spirit of Hadfield’s international best-seller, “An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth,” “You Are Here” is punctuated with fun, fascinating commentary on life in zero gravity. The visually striking book features remarkable photographs that illuminate the history and consequences of human settlement, the magnificence of never-before-noticed landscapes, and the power of the natural forces shaping our world and the future of our species.
Hadfield, a civilian with the Canadian Space Agency and a retired Canadian Air Force colonel, is one of the world’s most seasoned and accomplished astronauts. He most recently served as commander of the International Space Station, where, while conducting a record-setting number of scientific experiments and overseeing an emergency spacewalk, he gained worldwide acclaim for his breathtaking photographs and educational videos about life in space. His music video, a zero-gravity version of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” received over 10 million views in its first three days online. His TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) talk, delivered in March 2014, drew more than 1 million views in just three weeks.
Thursday, December 4, 2014 (7 – 8 p.m., Linda Hall Library)
American Medicine and the Panama Canal: Miasmas, Mosquitoes and Malaria
E-tickets are available here.
Dr. Enrique Chaves, a clinical professor and pediatric neurologist at the University of Kansas Medical Center, will discuss the time in which Theodore Roosevelt appointed William Gorgas (in 1904) as Chief Sanitary Officer in charge of the sanitation in Panama. Armed with recent knowledge that the mosquito was the vector for yellow fever and malaria, Gorgas converted Panama from a pesthole to a healthy place and made possible the completion of the Panama Canal in 1914. Mr. Chaves has completed a small exhibition at KU Med on this subject matter as well, running in conjunction with the Library’s exhibition.
Dr. Chaves completed his medical studies at the University of Oklahoma and pediatric and neurology residencies at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. He worked as a rotating intern and a pediatrician at Gorgas Hospital in Panama, where he did research in malaria, toxoplasmosis, tuberculosis and other tropical diseases. Dr. Chaves has written dozens of articles and several books on his findings. His main interests are the medical histories of malaria and yellow fever during the construction of the Panama Canal.
About the Linda Hall Library
The Linda Hall Library is the world's foremost independent research library devoted to science, engineering and technology. A not-for-profit, privately funded institution, the Library is open to the public free of charge. Since 1946, scholars, researchers, academic institutions and businesses around the world have accessed the Linda Hall Library's collections to learn, investigate, invent, explore and increase knowledge. Hundreds of people of all ages attend the Library's public programs each year to expand their awareness and understanding of science and technology. The 14 acres surrounding the Linda Hall Library are maintained as an urban arboretum open to the public for education and enjoyment. To learn more, visit http://www.lindahall.org.
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Elaina Boudreau, BELA Communications, +1 (913) 660-0548, [email protected]
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