The Franke Program in Science in the Humanities is proud to celebrate the publication of two new books on maps and mapping by Yale faculty members on Wednesday, May 4th from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. in Room 108 of the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall Street. No responses are necessary; just come and enjoy the event.
Priyamvada Natarajan is Professor of Astronomy & Physics at Yale and former Chair of the Yale Women’s Faculty Forum. Her research focuses on cosmology, gravitational lensing, and the formation and growth history of black holes over cosmic time. In Mapping the Heavens, published this week by Yale University Press, Natarajan traces the dynamic intellectual history of our conception of the universe. She explores the role of maps and mapping in the many revolutionary and radical scientific transformations of our view of the cosmos and our place within it. She uses maps literally and metaphorically to trace our ever-evolving understanding of the universe.
William Rankin is Assistant Professor of History of Science and Medicine in the History Department at Yale University. Rankin’s research focuses on the relationship between science and space, from the planetary scale down to the scale of individual buildings. His forthcoming book, After the Map: Cartography, Navigation, and the Transformation of Territory in the Twentieth Century, will be published by the University of Chicago Press in June, 2016. The book is a history of the mapping sciences in the twentieth century that traces the shift from the god’s-eye view of the paper map to the embedded experience of GPS.