Science Writer Dava Sobel to Open 2006-07 Jepson Leadership Forum With "Leaders and Leadership and the Dawn of Discovery"
September 18, 2006
Dava Sobel, former New York Times science reporter and author of the international bestseller “Longitude,” will speak at University of Richmond’s Modlin Center for the Arts Sept. 25 at 7 p.m. on “Leaders and Leadership, and the Dawn of Discovery.”
Sobel will discuss how society’s advancement—through exploration, technology, science and discovery—is linked to leadership. She specializes in the backgrounds of legendary scientists, especially the barriers, fears and realities they overcame on their quests.
Sobel is the first of eight distinguished American scientific leaders speaking in this year’s Jepson Leadership Forum on the theme of “Science, Society and Leadership.” The series is sponsored by the Jepson School of Leadership Studies, and all programs are free and open to the public. Tickets can be reserved by calling (804) 289-8980. Group ticket requests can be made by contacting the Jepson School’s community programs office at (804) 287-6627 or jepson@richmond.edu.
Sobel has written for such magazines as Audubon, Discover, Life and The New Yorker. She has lectured at The Smithsonian Institution and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and has been interviewed on National Public Radio, NBC and C-SPAN.
“Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time,” follows the life of self-educated clockmaker John Harrison, who invented a longitude tracking timepiece in the mid-18th century. The book was translated into two-dozen foreign languages and won several prestigious awards, including the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and England’s Book of the Year.
Another of her books, “Galileo’s Daughter,” explores the scientist’s life through letters from his eldest child. It won the 1999 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for science and technology, was a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in biography and spent five weeks as the #1 New York Times nonfiction bestseller.
Both books have been made into acclaimed PBS documentaries.