2005 SPRING DINNER
Our annual SPRING DINNER was held on Saturday, 19th March, at Roxbury Latin School, 101 St. Theresa Avenue, West Roxbury, Mass., starting at 6:30p.m.
Our speaker was Owen Gingerich, Research Professor of Astronomy and History of Science at Harvard and Senior Astronomer Emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. His talk was entitled "The Book Nobody Read" which is based on his own book, just out and definitely being read! By dint of tracking down and establishing the provenances of surviving copies of Copernicus's magnum opus, " De revolutionibus", Gingerich comes to the surprising conclusion that, despite what standard texts tell us about the significance of this work to the history of astronomy, it was not in fact widely recognized when it first came out. A detailed biography of Professor Gingerich can be found at http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hsdept/faculty/gingerich .
Some pictures from the dinner are shown below.
Sincerely
Nick Copley,
Balliol College, Oxford
President of the Society
Reception: 6:30 PM
Dinner: 7:30 PM