Dava Sobel is an American science writer and former New York Times science reporter acclaimed for making complex scientific history accessible to the public. Her bestsellers books include Longitude, Galileo’s Daughter, The Planets, The Glass Universe, and most recently The Elements of Marie Curie. Dava has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize,
Lauren Gunderson is an American playwright, screenwriter, and short story author acclaimed for centering women in history, science, and literature. Named the most produced living US playwright multiple times since 2015. Her science plays include Silent Sky, Ada and the Engine and many more. A feminist dramatist, she uses theatre to amplify women’s voices and social issues.
Break A Leg Productions (BAL) is a not-for-profit Theatre Company in New York that presents full productions and several reading series including The Art of Science featuring plays about scientists and their lives. BAL aims to bridge the gap that separates people by enabling audiences to recognize and even laugh at obstacles that divide them. www.BALProductions.org
Short Bio, Harry Lustig, SEPTEMBER 2011 issue of Physics Today
Harry Lustig, professor emeritus at City College of New York (CCNY) and former treasurer and acting executive secretary of the American Physical Society (APS), died on 2011 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Born in Vienna, Austria, in 1925, Harry sailed with his family to the US from Naples in November 1939 to flee Nazi persecution He was drafted on his 18th birthday to serve in the US Army. In 1946, Harry reentered CCNY, where he majored in physics. He earned a doctorate in theoretical nuclear physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1953. He spent the next 33 years as a member of the physics department. One of Harry’s major achievements was building an outstanding physics department at CCNY. By the mid 1970s, CCNY was ranked in the top 20 of the nation’s roughly 160 PhD-granting physics departments.
After his retirement in 1986, Harry embarked on a second career as Treasurer and Executive Secretary of the American Physical Society. In 2000, he co-developed a series of public symposia at the Graduate Center of CUNY to coincide with the Broadway opening of the play Copenhagen in 2000. Throughout his life, Harry was active in defending and promoting free speech, reasoned discussion, and civil liberties. He spoke to more than 100 community groups and on radio and television in favor of a nuclear test ban, and during the Vietnam War he helped developed a center of opposition to the war.
Harry was equally serious about excellent wine, mushroom hunting, great music (most particularly opera), and objets d’art. He was a bon vivant, a feinschmecker, a connoisseur in all matters of fine living. Harry lived a long, rich, and meaningful life. He is missed for his strong commitment to justice and reason, his energy and creativity, his wit, and his deep and abiding friendship.
