The Lyne Starling Trimble Public Event Series features prominent science historians, writers, and scientists who illuminate the place of science in modern society and culture.
Funded by a generous donation from Dr. Virginia Trimble, the event series is named after her late father, Dr. Lyne Starling Trimble (1912–1992), who held patents for a number of color-reproduction systems and was an innovative chemist. The series was first endowed at $100,000 by Dr. Trimble, and the Trimble Lecture Fund aims to increase the reach and sustainability of the series by further endowing it at $200,000.
Upcoming Lectures:
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Elly Truitt, University of Pennsylvania
"A Thirteenth-Century Perspective on Optical Science and Experiment: The Case of Roger Bacon"
May 8, 2024
American Center for Physics, 555 12th Street NW, Washington, DC 20004 -
NASA’s John Mather and Mark Clampin in discussion:
"The Next Great Space Telescope: Lessons for Success in the Search for Life Outside the Solar System"
June 5, 2024
American Center for Physics, 555 12th Street NW, Washington, DC 20004 -
Lawrence Principe, Johns Hopkins University
Coming in fall 2024
Past Lectures:
- "Making Radium Kinky: The Epistemology of the Familiar"
Maria Rentetzi, Fiedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
December 6, 2023
(Virtual live stream) - “The Victorian Cable Empire and the Making of ‘Maxwell's Equations’”
Bruce Hunt, University of Texas at Austin
November 15, 2023 - "What was Astro-meteorology and Why Does it Matter?"
Anne Lawrence-Mathers, University of Reading
September 20, 2023 - "Decolonize the IGY! Tales about Past Episodes of Scientific Collaboration and the Importance of Challenging them in the Future"
Simone Turchetti, University of Manchester
August 31, 2023 - “'Scientific Literacy’ as Educational Catchphrase in America”
John Rudolph, University of Wisconsin-Madison
November 2, 2022 - "Heroic Inventors and Voting Rights – The Surprising Ways in which American Ingenuity Has Defined American Identity"
Kara Swanson, Northeastern University
October 19, 2022 - "The Structure and Development of 21st Century Science"
Presented by Hanne Andersen, Section for History and Philosophy of Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
August 11, 2022 - “Cosmic Connections: James Croll’s influence on Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin”
James Fleming, Colby College
May 4, 2022 - "The Rochester-Chandigarh Cyclotron"
Jahnavi Phalkey, Science Gallery Bengaluru
November 3, 2021 - "Campaigning for More Marie Curies: The Movement to Expand Young Women's STEM Participation, 1950-2021"
Amy Bix, Iowa State University
September 29, 2021 - "How Prussian Precision Became Political"
Kathryn Olesko, Georgetown University
February 17, 2021 - "Science in the Post-truth Era: A Decolonial Approach"
Katemari Rosa, Universidade Federal da Bahia
January 27, 2021 - "When Condensed Matter Became King"
Joseph D. Martin, University of Durham
December 2, 2020 - "ATOMIC SPY: The Dark Lives of Klaus Fuchs"
Nancy Greenspan
November 11, 2020 - "Tests and Testing: The Case of Hearing and the Making of Modern Aurality in the Long Twentieth Century"
Alexandra Hui, Mississippi State University
October 21, 2020 - "Manufacturing Hands: Japanese Robotics and Human Labor"
Yulia Frumer, Johns Hopkins University
September 30, 2020 - "Hubble Space Telescope Images and the Astronomical Sublime"
Dr. Elizabeth A. Kessler, Stanford University
May 7, 2020 - "The Hubble Space Telescope: 30 Years of Discovery and Awe"
Dr. Jennifer J. Wiseman, NASA
April 29, 2020 - "Tangible Things of American Astronomy"
Presented by Dr. Sara Schechner
November 6, 2019 - "The Impact of World War I on the Sciences"
Presented by Virginia Trimble
October 3, 2019
Cal Tech, Pasadena, CA 91125 - "The New Big Science: How We Got Here, What Changed"
Presented by Dr. Catherine Westfall
October 2, 2019 - "Freedom’s Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science"
Presented by Dr. Audra Wolfe
April 3, 2019 - "When the Telescope Met the Computer: Making and Sharing a Digital Universe"
Presented by Dr. W. Patrick McCray
January 23, 2019 - "Light and Shadow: Cold War Physics in Secret and in Public"
Presented by Assistant Professor Benjamin Wilson
November 14, 2018 - "The Trouble with Einstein’s Time"
Presented by Jimena Canales
October 3, 2018 - "Shifting Problems in Modern Physics and in the Histories That We Write"
Presented by Professor Mary Jo Nye
September 12, 2018 - "'The Negro Scientist': W.E.B. DuBois and the Diversity Problem in Science and the History of Science"
Presented by Professor Evelynn Hammonds
May 16, 2018 - "Farm Hall and the German Atomic Project of World War II: A Dramatic History"
Writen by Professor David C. Cassidy and performed by Tonic Theater Company
November 20, 2017
Carnegie Institution for Science, 1530 P Street NW, Washington, DC 20005 - “Scientific Babel: English, German, and the Fall of Polyglot Natural Science”
Presented by Professor Michael D. Gordin
October 18, 2017 - “Is Seeing Believing? Direct and Indirect Observation in Physics”
Presented by Professor Allan Franklin
September 19, 2017 - “The Greatest Myth in the History of Astronomy”
Presented by Professor Owen Gingerich
May 10, 2017 - “Einstein in California”
Presented by Professor Diana Kormos-Buchwald
March 22, 2017 - "From Physics to Prophecy: Learning to Predict the Scientific Apocalypse"
Presented by Matt Stanley
September 13, 2016 - "A Bridge too Far? The Demise of the Superconducting Super Collider"
Presented by Michael Riordan
Tuesday,May 17, 2016 - "Physicists as Diplomats: US-China Scientific Exchanges from Arms Control to Climate Change"
Presented by Zuoyue Wang
Wednesday March 23, 2016 at 6:30 p.m. - "Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters"
Presented by Kate Brown
Thursday, February 18th, 2016 at 6:30 p.m. - "Einstein's Legacy: Studying Gravity in War and Peace"
Presented by David Kaiser
Tuesday, October 27th, 2015
Reception at 6:30 p.m. and talk at 7:00 p.m. - "Stanford Ovshinsky and the Creation of the Nickel Metal Hydride Battery"
Speaker: Lillian Hoddeson, Fermilab Historian and Winner of the 2012 Abraham Pais Prize
Thursday, April 16 at 7:00 p.m. - "The Science of Optics; The History of Art"
Speaker: Charles M. Falco, College of Optical Sciences and Department of Physics, University of Arizona, Tucson
March 26, 2015 at 6:30 p.m. - "Atomic Tracings: Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine"
Speaker: Angela N. H. Creager, Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History, Princeton University
November 3, 2014 at 6:00 p.m. - David Cassidy reads from his stage play "Farm Hall"
- May 7, 2014 at 6:00 p.m.
Reception followed by play
New Mexico School for the Deaf, Santa Fe, NM - "Niels Bohr: Life Behind Physics"
Speaker: Vilhelm Bohr, Grandson of Niels Bohr and Chief, Laboratory of Molecular Gerontology at the National Institute on Aging
January 15, 2014 at 6:00 p.m. - "Rutherford's Path to the Nuclear Atom"
Speaker: Dr. John Campbell, Professor Emeritus of Physics, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
September 24, 2013 at 6:00 p.m. -
“Maverick Genius: The Pioneering Odyssey of Freeman Dyson”
Speaker: Phil Schewe, Biographer and Science Writer
April 24, 2013 - "How the Cold War Changed the Smithsonian's Astrophysical Observatory"
Speaker: David DeVorkin, Senior Curator of History of Astronomy and the Space Sciences at the National Air and Space Museum
July 29, 2011 at 6:45 p.m.
- "Reflections on the Founding of the Center for History of Physics"
Speaker: Gerald Holton, Professor Emeritus, Harvard University
2010