From: TerryMosel@aol.com
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 15:07:18 EDT
Subject: TV, radio & Lecture

Hi all,

Three items to note:

1. The second part of the excellent Channel 4 Programme The Day the Earth Was
born is tonight at 9.0 (ends 10.00). this one leads up to the development of
the first life on Earth. Hope the second is as good as the first.

2. The interview I was to do about the 'scam' of buying star names on
'Talkback' on Radio Ulster last Thursday is now scheduled for about 12.50 on
Tuesday (22nd), but again subject to other developments.

3. a reminder about Dr Maire Brück's lecture:
The RDS Science and Technology Committee in association with Women in
Technology and Science announces a forthcoming lecture by Dr Mary Brück of
Edinburgh.

Dr Mary Brück, formerly of the Institute for Astronomy, University of
Edinburgh, will deliver a public lecture on the life and times of the
celebrated nineteenth century Skibbereen-born historian and astronomer Agnes
Mary Clerke. The lecture marks the publication by Cambridge University Press
of Mary Brück's acclaimed biography of the famous historian of science.  The
lecture: "The Remarkable Agnes Clerke and Some of her Contemporaries", takes
place in The Minerva Suite of the Royal Dublin Society, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4
on Wednesday, 23 October at 8.00 p.m.

Agnes Mary Clerke was an exceptionally accomplished scholar, fluent in
several languages and a prolific correspondent. She was accepted on equal
terms by many of the leading astronomers of the day, at a time when female
scientific writers were almost unknown. Mary Brück's lecture will highlight
the many successes of Agnes Clerke's life and some of the achievements of 
other women in physics and astronomy in the late nineteenth century.

Mary Brück (née Conway) was born in Co. Meath, and is a Physics 
graduate of University College Dublin.  She obtained her PhD in astronomy at 
Edinburgh after which she was appointed to the staff of Dunsink Observatory, 
Dublin, where her main research dealt with solar spectroscopy.

It was at Dunsink that she met and later married Professor Hermann Alexander
Brück, Director of Dunsink Observatory from 1947-1957.  At the end of this
period she moved to the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, where her husband had
been appointed Astronomer Royal for Scotland and Regius Professor at the 
University of Edinburgh.

Since retiring from formal teaching duties at the University of Edinburgh, Dr
Brück has taken a keen interest in the lives of early women astronomers and
in the history of Irish astronomy. She is the author of numerous scientific
and historical papers, is an honorary member of the Irish Astronomical
Society, and in 2001 was awarded the Lorimer Medal of the Astronomical
Society of Edinburgh for her work in diffusing knowledge of astronomy.

Admission to the lecture is free but as places are limited please reserve 
your place by contacting: 
Annette McDonnell, RDS, Dublin 4. 
Tel: (01) 240-7217 
Fax: (01) 660-4014 
Email: annette.mcdonnell@rds.ie.

Terry Moseley

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