The Day We Found the Universe: A Centenary Celebration
Please join the Amateur Observers’ Society of New York on Sunday, October 13, 2024 for a wonderful talk by author Marcia Bartusiak.
In 1923 Edwin Hubble took a historic astronomical photograph that ultimately established that our universe was filled with myriad galaxies just like our own. It was a realization that reshaped how humans understood their place in the cosmos. Six years later, continuing research by Hubble and others forced Albert Einstein to renounce his own cosmic model and finally accept the astonishing fact that the universe was not at rest but instead expanding. The story of these discoveries includes battles of will, clever insights, and wrong turns made by the early investigators in this great twentieth-century pursuit, from the luminaries (Einstein, Hubble, Harlow Shapley) to the lesser known (such as Henrietta Leavitt, who discovered the means to measure the vast dimensions of the cosmos, and Vesto Slipher, the first and unheralded discoverer of the universe’s expansion). Marcia Bartusiak will recount these watershed moments in our cosmic history, describing how Hubble’s triumph was not his alone but was achieved by his standing on the shoulders of many before him.
Combining her undergraduate training in journalism with a master’s degree in physics, Marcia Bartusiak has been covering the fields of astronomy and physics for more than four decades.
A Professor of the Practice Emeritus in the Graduate Program in Science Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she is the author of seven books on astrophysics and the history of astronomy, including Black Hole, Einstein’s Unfinished Symphony (winner of the American Institute of Physics Science Communication Award), and The Day We Found the Universe (winner of the History of Science Society’s Davis Prize).
In 2008 she was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, cited for “exceptionally clear communication of the rich history, the intricate nature, and the modern practice of astronomy to the public at large.”