Lyne Starling Trimble History of Science Public Lectures

The Lyne Starling Trimble History of Science Public Lecture Series features prominent science historians and writers who highlight the important roles that science plays in modern society and culture. All lectures are held at the American Center for Physics, College Park, MD, unless noted otherwise.

Funded by a generous donation from Dr. Virginia Trimble, the lecture 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 support and increase sustainability by further endowing the series at $200,000.

Upcoming Lectures:

• "Making Radium Kinky: The Epistemology of the Familiar"
• Maria Rentetzi, Fiedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
  December 6, 2023 
  (Virtual live stream)
• Lawrence Principe, John Hopkins University
  Postponed to 2024

Past Lectures:

• “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