Ten years ago, on December 9, 2015, an event took place that I have always credited with being key to my involvement with the Vatican Observatory. That was the night that Br. Guy, then the newly-minted Director of the Observatory, and Ormsby Mitchell, the long-dead American astronomer, spoke at the Louisville (Kentucky, USA) Free Public Library, to a packed house of over 600 people.
I cannot recall exactly how Guy and I became acquainted. I know that my contact with the VO began when I had a paper accepted for publication in the journal Baltic Astronomy. The journal was published out of Lithuania, and I was concerned to not do anything culturally stupid in working with its editor. I looked up other people who frequently published in Baltic Astronomy, and decided to ask advice from a guy named Richard Boyle, who I selected based on his American-sounding name. That, it so happened, was Fr. Richard Boyle, S.J., of the VO.
But that Baltic Astronomy paper was published in 2007. Somewhere between then and 2015 I got to know Br. Guy a bit. He has a version of this story (you can find it in his recent article in America). I know that I interviewed him for the local science show that I did for a while on Louisville’s Catholic radio station, WLCR-AM1040. We met in Chicago once. He took me to meet some people at the Adler Planetarium and see some rare books there, and I knew some of the Adler folks already. I had met them through the biennial Notre Dame History of Astronomy conferences. I started attending those in 2009, so this Chicago meeting must have been some time after that.
At any rate, in 2015 I was president of the Louisville chapter of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Honor Society. The chapter was dwindling (hence my being president — desperate times call for desperate measures), but we had money in the bank, so we tried to have some talks that would draw people. In 2014 Guy had been awarded the Carl Sagan medal for his science communication. So I invited him to come speak — he was merely an astronomer with the Vatican Observatory at the time — and he accepted.
I arranged for the talk, which would also feature Mitchell (more on that below), to be in a nice room in the basement of the Louisville library. The room had a capacity of perhaps 75 people, and I was hoping we would get enough people attending that it would not look embarrassingly empty. The talk was free, but the library required people to get tickets in order to know how many to expect.
Meanwhile, Pope Francis appointed Br. Guy to be Director of the VO.
After a while, I got an e-mail from the library that the room was filling up. That was good. They wanted to move into the auditorium, which seated 400. That was bad. We would go from a sure thing of an impressively full, good-sized room to what was certainly going to be a 3/4 empty auditorium.
But then, another e-mail. So many tickets were going out that they were going to move the event from the auditorium to the atrium of the library, which would hold 600! Furniture would be moved. Chairs and a stage would be set up. The head of the library would be there. This was going to be a Big Deal! And before long, the library informed me that they had sent out all the tickets they could — there were more people interested in this event than the library could seat.
Br. Guy arrived in Louisville expecting to give a talk to a group of maybe 25 to 50 people. He ended up talking to a boisterous packed house of 600. You can watch a complete video of it below.
The following discussion of the event is adapted from “Drawing a Crowd for Science“, which I wrote for Sigma Xi in 2016.
Occasionally science outreach works and expands the audience of people attentive to science. One such occasion was on the evening of December 9, 2015, in Louisville, Kentucky. The Louisville Chapter of Sigma Xi sponsored a program at the Louisville Free Public Library that drew 600 people. They came to hear two scientists from two different centuries speak. The event was titled: “Beneath the Same Sky: A Vatican Astronomer and a Civil War General Speak to Louisville about the Heavens.”
One of our speakers was Dr. Guy Consolmagno, a Jesuit Brother who Pope Francis recently appointed Director of the Vatican Observatory and who has written some very popular books on astronomy, including Turn Left at Orion (with Dan Davis), and most recently Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial? (with Father Paul Mueller, SJ). The other was Kentucky-born Ormsby Mitchel, founder of the Cincinnati Observatory and a General in the Union Army in the Civil War (Mitchel was portrayed by teaching artist Tony Dingman of the Frazier History Museum).
Dingman spoke first as Mitchel, describing the vast scale of the universe in a speech closely based on one given in 1847 by the real Mitchel. He noted that the universe was comprehensible by human beings, being governed by laws we can understand. Of the universe and its laws he stated, “God has given us these works for our examination, and He has given us this intellect by which we are enabled to comprehend their structures; and it is by this that we are able to rise — to climb — to soar, by our own efforts and by His aid.”
Consolmagno spoke about the Vatican Observatory and about the nature of science, focusing on ideas from the history of astronomy that were “almost correct” — ideas which ranged from the relationship between comets and meteor showers to the nature of the moons of Jupiter. “Sometimes,” he said, “science makes its most significant progress when it’s almost correct — which is to say, when it’s wrong.” He took questions from the audience, ranging from whether the recent flyby of Pluto changed his mind about the dwarf planet (he was on the committee that recommended that Pluto no longer be classified as a planet) to how he fit together his scientific knowledge and the book of Genesis. The speakers were regularly interrupted by laughter and applause, and the comments that both the library and our chapter received were unanimously positive.
The full program can be viewed on Youtube (CLICK HERE).
[It is well worth the watch.]
Our chapter wanted a program to raise Sigma Xi’s profile in the community, attract new members, and revive lapsed members. That meant a program featuring a noted scientist who would generate broad interest. Consolmagno is such a scientist. He has appeared on The Colbert Report. He received the American Astronomical Society’s 2014 Carl Sagan Medal for his ability to communicate with the public. Moreover, with the popularity of Pope Francis and the heavy media coverage of his recent U.S. visit, a Vatican astronomer seemed likely to draw interest (but we never expected to draw 600 people). Mitchel added a local connection and has also been compared to Sagan for his communication ability.
I made the acquaintance of both astronomers through my research on astronomy’s history. A focus of that research has been the seventeenth-century astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli. He studied gravity, gave lunar features the names we now use, and assembled strong scientific arguments against the Copernican system. He was also a Jesuit, which led me to a modern Jesuit astronomer: Consolmagno.
Acquaintance with Mitchel came through a conference at the University of Notre Dame this past summer [of 2015]. There Trudy Bell, an editor with Sky & Telescope, talked on Mitchel and his speaking ability. That brought to mind the Frazier History Museum. Their teaching artists excel at portraying historical figures using their own words. Long-standing contacts with the library and the Frazier, and the support of my college, brought it all together.
The program succeeded partly because of the partners — the Frazier and the library both had extensive community contacts. We also used chapter funds for advertising. But the biggest reason for its success was the speakers, who were scientists with “crossover appeal,” bringing in people whose interests lay in the areas of history, religion, oratory, and even theater (Dingman is known in the Louisville arts scene) as well as science.
Two other points are worth mentioning. The library had to limit the number of tickets (free) given out for the program because of space concerns. Otherwise, the crowd would have been larger. Also, this is not our chapter’s first program to draw hundreds of people: in 2011 we packed the local planetarium to beyond overflowing with another science-and-history talk.
Thus the experience of our chapter suggests that one way to find success in science outreach and in expanding the audience of people attentive to science is to form partnerships with local institutions, to feature serious science speakers who also appeal to people with other interests, and to include history!
Not long after this event, Guy invited me to write for this web site. My first post was in February of 2016. From there my involvement with the VO grew. I have always assumed that this phenomenally successful event at the library played a role in that invitation. Interestingly, what he said at the Louisville talk about science and being almost correct (that is, wrong) would later turn into the 2023 book that he and I co-authored:
Until I wrote this post, I had forgotten about how the science-going-wrong connection in our friendship went all the way back to the Louisville talk!
Oh, and note the faith-and-science connection in the Louisville talk, with Mitchel speaking about God!
It was a great event, and I am still proud of it! The Louisville chapter of Sigma Xi eventually collapsed, however. We had some other well-attended talks, but nothing like the night of December 9, 2015. And those talks did not generate new members for Sigma Xi.
