Boston Flora

Tag: Chasing Venus

  • Tuesday, March 19, 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm – Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation

    The Concord Museum and the Concord Museum Guild of Volunteers will host author Andrea Wulf on Thursday, March 19 at the Concord Museum, Cambridge Turnpike at Lexington Road in Concord, for a lecture beginning at 1 pm.  The talk is the 2013 Mary M. Lesneski Memorial Lecture, on Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation. 

    Founding Gardeners offers a fascinating look at the revolutionary generation from the unique and intimate perspective of their lives as gardeners, plantsmen, and farmers. For the founding fathers, gardening, agriculture, and botany were elemental passions, as deeply ingrained in their characters as their belief in liberty for the nation they were creating. Wulf’s stories of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison reveal a guiding, but previously overlooked, ideology of the American Revolution.

    Andrea Wulf was born in India and moved to Germany as a child. She lives in Britain where she trained as a design historian at the Royal College of Art. Her most recent book, Chasing Venus, was published in 2012 in eight countries in conjunction with the last transit of Venus in our century. Wulf has written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, and many other newspapers. She has lectured widely to large audiences at the Royal Geographical Society and Royal Society in London, the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, Monticello, and the Chicago Botanic Garden, among many others. She is a three-time fellow of the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello and the Eccles British Library Writer in Residence 2013.

    During her visit to Concord, Ms. Wulf will be a Scholar in Residence at the Concord Museum, exploring both the Concord Museum’s collection and the collections of other area institutions for research for a new book.

    As is tradition, Afternoon Tea organized by the Concord Museum’s Guild of Volunteers follows the lecture. The annual Mary M. Lesneski Lecture, begun 34 years ago in memory of a dedicated Concord Museum volunteer, has brought nationally renowned speakers on a variety of topics to the Museum each March. Tickets to the lecture and tea are $30; $25 Concord Museum Members. Reservations are required as space is limited; (978) 369-9763, ext. 216. Books will be available for purchase in the Museum Shop, with a book signing to follow the lecture.

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  • Wednesday, May 30, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens

    In her new book, Chasing Venus, Andrea Wulf tells the extraordinary story of the first global scientific collaboration, set amid warring armies, hurricanes, scientific endeavors, and personal tragedy. On June 6, 1761 and June 3, 1769, the planet Venus passed between Earth and Sun – each time visible as a small black dot against the burning face of the Sun for six hours. Transits of Venus always arrive in pairs – eight years apart – but then it takes more than a century before they are seen again. In the 1760s the world’s scientific community was electrified because the transit would allow them for the first time to calculate the distance between the planets in our solar system. This would require triangulated data to be compiled from various exact points around the globe – all taken simultaneously during the short period of the actual Transit. Join us for an intriguing glimpse at the spirit of the Enlightenment and the collaborative race to measure the heavens. Chasing Venus will be published in May 2012 in conjunction of the Transit of Venus on June 5/6, 2012.  Andrea Wulf will speak on Wednesday, May 30, from 7 – 8:30 at the Weld Hill Research Building at the Arnold Arboretum.  Register at www.my.arboretum.harvard.edu.  Fee $10 sponsor organization member, $20 nonmember.  Offered by the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Historical Society.

    The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics is holding a special Observatory Night for viewing the Venus transit. Learn more. In 2004 we were treated to a sunrise view of Venus crossing the disk of the sun. On June 5th, we will enjoy a sunset Venus transit. If you miss this one, you won’t get another chance to see it until 2117 – and that’s a very long time to wait. The Center for Astrophysics will hold a special rooftop viewing of the Venus transit beginning at 6:00 pm. The transit will be visible from 6:03 until the sun sets at 8:19. Viewing is weather-dependent so call 617-495-7461 to check for cancellation.