An illustrated lecture with author Andrea Wulf
***ADVANCE TICKETS RECOMMENDED***
Date: Sunday, October 28th
Time: 7:30
Admission: $12
Event Cancelled
Presented by Atlas Obscura
This summer an extremely rare celestial event took place - the transit of Venus. In the eighteenth century the transit held the answer for one of the most pressing questions of the age: the size of the solar system. Hundreds of ambitious astronomers and their instruments were dispatched to observe the Venus’s march across the sun. At a time when war was tearing Europe and much of the rest of the world apart, they overcame political, geographical and intellectual boundaries – all in the name of science. New York Times Best Selling and award-winning author Andrea Wulf tells the extraordinary story of the first global scientific collaboration set amid warring armies, hurricanes, scientific endeavour and personal tragedy.
Andrea Wulf was born in India, moved to Germany as a child and lives in Britain. She’s the author of four books including “Founding Gardeners” and “Brother Gardeners” which won the American Horticultural Society 2010 Book Award and was long-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2008, the most prestigious non-fiction award in the UK. Her latest, “Chasing Venus”, was described by the Daily Mail in the UK as an ‘enthralling, nail-biting thriller’ and by the Boston Globe as ‘a book both astrophysicists and poets can understand’. She writes for the New York Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal and the Guardian. Last year she gave 50 talks on “Founding Gardeners” and is a regular contributor on radio and television.
This is part of the “Atlas Obscura Speakers” series of talks at Observatory.
ADVANCE TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE http://obscura-society-nyc-chasing-venus.eventbrite.com/