Lunch & Learn for May 2016

Lunch & Learn

Co-sponsored by Friends of the Folsom Library

and the Rensselaer Retirees Forum

Friday, May 6, 2016

12:00 noon to 1:00 pm  

Folsom Library Fischbach Room 

Free!

 Everyone is welcome!  

Bring your lunch or purchase one at the Library Cafe. 

Dessert will be provided.

“Charles Darwin:

A Life in Science, 1809-1882”

Presenter:  P. Thomas Carroll, PhD



Charles Darwin, one of the most significant scientists of all time, is also one of the most misunderstood. It is not true that he discovered evolution. It is not true that he was the naturalist aboard the H.M.S. Beagle. It is not even true that he started out as a biologist.  Contrary to decades of scholarship that argued otherwise, it is not true that he delayed publishing On the Origin of Species for 20 years because he feared the religious implications of his findings. In fact, he considered that book to be a mere abstract that he threw together at the last minute.  This is just the beginning of a whole catalog of misunderstandings about Darwin.  P. Thomas Carroll, PhD, the first paid employee of the Darwin Correspondence Project and an expert on Darwin and Darwin letters, will set the record straight in this illustrated lecture that puts Darwin's life in proper context.

P. Thomas Carroll, the first paid employee of the Darwin Correspondence Project and an expert on Darwin and Darwin letters, will set the record straight in this illustrated lecture that puts Darwin’s life in proper context.  A native of Princeton, New Jersey, Tom is an American cultural historian who specializes in the history of American science and technology.  A graduate of Caltech and the University of Pennsylvania, he was the Executive Director of the Hudson Mohawk Industrial Gateway from 1997 to 2013, and the Executive Director of RiverSpark, New York State’s First Heritage Area, from 2002 to 2013, and is now the Gateway's "Senior Scholar."  

Before all that, Tom was Associate Professor of History in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and now and then has held adjunct appointments both there and at Rensselaer's School of Architecture. Besides having published on the history of this region, Tom has published on topics ranging from Charles Darwin, to the history of solid propellant rocketry, to the history of American chemistry.  He is co-author of the lead article in the centennial issue of Science, the nation's leading weekly magazine of scientific research, and he is the sole author of the lead article in the centennial issue of American Scientist. 

In 1975, Tom became the very first paid employee of the Charles Darwin Correspondence Project, traveling to Cambridge, England, that summer to help launch it.  Just recently, Tom accepted an invitation to write the history of the early days of the project.  He has been a Mellon Fellow at the Library of the American Philosophical Society and an Exxon Research Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  He is proud to live in Troy with his wife Nan.

Adrienne Birchler

Coordinator

Friends of the Folsom Library