Current Episode
Episode 39 - 2012 WISS Award Recipent - Dr. France A. Córdova
May 16, 2012Astronomy Conversations - Dr. France A. Córdova
Presented at the Union League Club of Chicago on May 2, 2012
France Córdova is the 11th president of Purdue University and the first woman to head that institution. She has served on the Fundamental Science Committee of the National Science and Technology Council and the President’s National Medal of Science Committee and been heavily involved with the National Science Foundation, the National Research Council, the National Academy of Sciences and other nonprofit agencies devoted to the promotion of science. Dr. Córdova is a former NASA chief scientist and a Senate-confirmed member of the National Science Board. She was unanimously confirmed by Congress as a citizen member of the Smithsonian Institution Board of Regents and was recently elected chairperson for a three-year term.
At Purdue, she has led the university to record levels of research funding, reputational rankings, and student retention rates; championed diversity among students, staff and university leadership; and promoted student success, faculty excellence, and programmatic innovation. Córdova has worked diligently to broaden Purdue’s role as a top research institution on the global stage.
Recent Episodes
Episode 38 - Astronomy Conversations - Bruce Stephenson, PhD
Apr 18, 2012Astronomy Conversations - Adam Frank, PhD
Presented at the Adler Planetarium on March 15, 2012
Bruce Stephenson has served as curator of the Adlerʼs historical collections since 1995, long enough to learn a few mysterious secrets about them. With European colleagues, he participated in a project examining the provenance and authenticity of items in the Mensing Collection that forms the heart of the Adlerʼs historical collectionsDr. Stephenson will probe the dark underbelly of the collection: replicas, marriages, inauthentic
instruments, and forgeries that found their way into the Adlerʼs holdings.
Episode 37 - Astronomy Conversations - Adam Frank, PhD
Mar 21, 2012Astronomy Conversations - Adam Frank, PhD
Presented at the Adler Planetarium on March 15, 2012
Adam Frank is a popular author, a science commentator and blogger for NPR, and a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester. His latest book, About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang explores the relationship between changing ideas in cosmology and the cultural idea of time.
Episode 36 - Astronomy Conversations - Alan Zablocki
Feb 15, 2012Astronomy Conversations - Alan Zablocki
Presented at the Adler Planetarium on January 19, 2012
As part of our "Adler After Dark" event the Space Visualization Lab hosts astronomers and graduate students as they present their work and knowledge to the public.
Episode 35 - The Hubble's Greatest Hits - Chris Lintott, PhD
Jan 18, 2012The Hubble's Greatest Hits - Chris Lintott, PhD
Presented at the Adler Planetarium on January 13th, 2012
"The Hubble Space Telescope is the best known telescope in history, and the most successful. Its nearly 20 years of history have produced thousands of papers, and hundreds of thousands of images. Reviewing them all would take a lifetime, so luckily Adler astronomer Dr. Chris Lintott has sorted through the archives to bring you his top ten Hubble images. Ranging from new views of our own little Solar System, through the first glimpses of worlds around other stars, this cosmic tour will make use of the incredible projection capabilities of the Grainger Sky Theatre to take Dr. Lintott's audience to the most distant galaxies."
Dr. Lintott is a member of the Adler's Citizen Science department, and splits his time between the planetarium and the University of Oxford, where he is a researcher and a research fellow at New College. He is the project lead of the world's largest collection of citizen science projects, [ http://Zooniverse.org ]Zooniverse.org, which invite members of the public to classify galaxies, discover planets and even sort whale songs. His own research draws on his background as an astrochemist to investigate the evolution of the population of galaxies we see in the present day Universe. An accomplished popularizer, he is co-presenter of the long-running BBC tv series 'Sky at Night' and co-author of 'Bang : The complete history of the Universe'.
Episode 34 - UPRIGHT WORKS: The emergence of the vertical library in the 16th century - T. Kimball Brooker, PhD
Dec 21, 2011UPRIGHT WORKS: The emergence of the vertical library in the 16th century - T. Kimball Brooker, PhD
Presented at the Adler Planetarium on December 1st, 2011
Dr. T. Kimball Brooker has actively participated in leadership roles for diverse businesses and academic institutions. He established the T. Kimball Brooker Prize for undergraduate book collecting at the University of Chicago, and serves as a trustee of the Morgan Library and Museum; a governor of the John Carter Brown Library; and President of the Association Internationale de Bibliophilie.
Dr. Brooker will describe the transition from manuscript to printed books, and illustrate how changes in the way they were stored transformed libraries. Please join The Webster Club for this fascinating evening.
