Marcia Bartusiak – MIT

The Day We Found the Universe

Participate in the Webinar on Zoom or the YouTube live stream on the Westport Observatory YouTube channel. Please feel free to ask questions in the chat and be a part of the live meeting. 

The WAS Classroom will be CLOSED for this online lecture.

On October 4, 1923, a hundred years ago, a young Edwin Hubble photographed a star in the Andromeda nebula which led to his finding that the Milky Way was not alone but instead accompanied by billions of other galaxies. Six years later, in a series of meetings at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, Hubble and others convinced Albert Einstein that the Universe was also expanding. In this talk, Marcia Bartusiak reveals the key players, battles of will, and clever insights that led to these discoveries, among the most startling in scientific history.

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.”