Harvard Science Book Talks invites you to join us in welcoming Suzie Sheehy and Matthew Cobb to our series. Though they work in separate fields, both speakers encourage us to reconsider how humans are shaping our world and what this means for our futures.
Both events are virtual and require advance registration using the links below.
Suzy Sheehy, The Matter of Everything: How Curiosity, Physics, and Improbable Experiments Changed the World
Date: Tuesday, January 10, 2023, 6:00pm
Physics has always been engaged in the pursuit of expanding our knowledge of the nature of matter and the world around us. But how can you use experiments to further this quest? How do you measure the mass of a particle a trillion times smaller than a grain of sand? How do you capture the movement of particles that have traveled billions of miles through deep space into our atmosphere? And, finally, why is all this important?
In The Matter of Everything, accelerator physicist Suzie Sheehy introduces us to the people who, through a combination of genius, persistence and luck, staged the experiments that changed the course of history. From the serendipitous discovery of X-rays in a German laboratory, to the scientists trying to prove Einstein wrong (and inadvertently proving him right), to the race to split open the atom, these experiments not only shaped our understanding of the cosmos, but also shaped how we live within it. These breakthroughs have helped us build detectors that map the insides of volcanoes, develop life-saving medical equipment and create electronic devices used in everything from fiber-optic cables to solar panels—among countless other advancements.
Along the way, Sheehy pulls back the curtain to reveal how physics is really done—not only by theorists with blackboards, but by experimentalists with brilliant designs. Celebrating human ingenuity, creativity and above all curiosity, The Matter of Everything is an inspiring story of discovery, and a powerful reminder that progress is a function of our desire to know.
Dr. Suzie Sheehy is a physicist, science communicator and academic who divides her time between research groups at the University of Oxford and University of Melbourne. She is currently focused on developing new particle accelerators for applications in medicine. The Matter of Everything is her first book.
Matthew Cobb, As Gods: A Moral History of the Genetic Age
Date: Tuesday, January 24, 2023, 6:00pm
In 2018, scientists manipulated the DNA of human babies for the first time. As biologist and historian Matthew Cobb shows in As Gods, this achievement was one many scientists have feared from the start of the genetic age.
Four times in the last fifty years, geneticists, frightened by their own technology, have called a temporary halt to their experiments. They ought to be frightened: Now we have powers that can target the extinction of pests, change our own genes, or create dangerous new versions of diseases in an attempt to prevent future pandemics.
Both awe-inspiring and chilling, As Gods traces the history of genetic engineering, showing that this revolutionary technology is far too important to be left to the scientists. They have the power to change life itself, but should we trust them to keep their ingenuity from producing a hellish reality?
Matthew Cobb is a professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Manchester. He is the author of six books: The Idea of the Brain, Life’s Greatest Secret, Generation, The Resistance, Eleven Days in August, and Smell: A Very Short Introduction. He lives in England.