David Levy Linda Hall Library Lecture, June 15, 2017

Back in February 2016, I wrote about my self-guided tour of comet hunter David Levy's observing logs, which were on display at the Linda Hall Library, having recently been donated by him.

Mr. Levy returned to the Linda Hall Library last week to discuss the upcoming total solar eclipse on August 21, 2017, which will cut a path across the United States from the Pacific northwest to South Carolina.

While the talk was open to the public, I was not able to attend. Happily, the Linda Hall Library live streamed his talk. It is currently archived at livestream.com. Unfortunately, the video is glitchy, the audio is fine and definitely worth a listen. Dial it up and let it play in the background!

David Levy - Total Eclipse of the Sun: A Once in a Lifetime Event

Copernicus: Body-Snatchers and Astronomical Revolution

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a Fellows Lecture by Dr. Karl Galle at Linda Hall Library, “The Unknown Copernicus: Spies, Printers, Amazons, and Body Snatchers in an Age of Astronomical Revolution.” I’ve included a few images from the lecture and reception in the library’s Rare Book Room.

Dr. Galle’s April 28th lecture capped a six month visit to the library in order to study more on the life and work of Copernicus, a subject that began as a simple sidebar in his dissertation.

Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium

While the place of Copernicus in the history of astronomy is well documented and quite secure, there were other aspects of his life that are far less appreciated, and paint a more fascinating portrait of a man that until now is usually only thought of as a ‘sixteenth century astronomer.’

Georg von Peuerbach's
Theoricae novae planetarium (1542)

What Dr. Galle found from his time among the open and closed stacks of the LHL’s rare books was that in addition to being next to impossible to make a living as an astronomer in Copernicus’s time, his ‘day job’ as a government functionary contained high adventure and intrigue, including when his apartment ransacked for a map that was thought to show geographic boundaries. He also had a physiologist acquaintance that were known to snatch bodies of the executed for truly scientific purposes.

Dr. Galle is now returning to his day job at the American University in Cairo, and hopes to have developed a book proposal by the end of 2016 dealing with his findings at the LHL.

Follow Dr. Galle on academia.edu

Georg von Peuerbach's
Theoricae novae planetarium...ab Erasmo Reinholdo...auctae (1553)

Comet Hunter David Levy's Observing Logs at the Linda Hall Library

After finishing an appraisal inspection in midtown Kansas City a last month, I stopped by the Linda Hall Library of Science and Engineering on the UMKC campus.

Opened in 1946, the library is privately funded and is "the world’s foremost independent research library devoted to science, engineering, and technology."

It had been a while since I last visited and was reminded of the fact when I found a story online about how Canadian comet hunter David Levy had donated his observing logs to the library last September. How I missed that, I don't know.

The library has seen several significant renovations since I ast visited, including the William M. Deramus III Cosmology Theater, and an expanded area for Special Collections and Rare Books.

I was chatting with the assistant librarian for the History of Science about our both having attended the University of Virginia's Rare Book School and endured the Principles of Descriptive Bibliography course, when Bill Ashworth, instructor for the university’s History of Astronomy course I took over 20 years ago, came by. I had not seen him since Dr. J.A. Stack's memorial service at the library in 1997, and it was good to catch up.

Anyway, apart from getting a new library card, I wanted to see David Levy's observing logs, which are now on display. I was very pleasantly surprised to see his observing log from when he was eleven looked very much like my own at that age. Of course he went on to become of the 20^th century’s most prolific comet hunters. 

Perhaps the most famous of his discoveries was Shoemaker-Levy 9, a comet that fragmented and crashed into Jupiter over the course of six days in July 1994.

Here are some pics from the exhibit:

David Levy and Clyde Tombaugh

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