Event Details
On Saturday, December 3, 2011, the 13th Annual Landregran Lecture will feature Br. Guy Consolmagno, S.J., Ph.D., Curator of the Vatican Meteorite Collection, Research Astronomer, and Planetary Scientist at the Vatican Observatory.
Brother Guy, who will be speaking on the topic "Why the Vatican Studies Meteorites," will be bringing some of the Vatican Meteorite Collection all the way from Rome to show the lecture attendees. The lecture, which will take place in Lynch Auditorium on the University of Dallas campus, will begin at 7:30 PM with the presentation of the annual School of Ministry Alumni Awards followed by Br. Guy's presentation. The event is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception in the upstairs dining room of Haggar University Center.
School of Ministry graduate and Catholic Biblical School alumni are invited to gather in fellowship before the Landregan Lecture at the annual Alumni Reunion. The gathering will begin at 6:00PM in Catherine Hall. For more information, visit the SOM Alumni webpage
here. To RSVP for the reunion, please contact Dani Schumer at
ministryevents@udallas.edu or 972-265-5811.
2011 Speaker | Brother Guy Consolmagno, S.J., Ph.D.
Br. Guy Consolmagno, S.J. was born in 1952 in Detroit, Michigan. He obtained his Bachelor of Science in 1974 and Master of Science in 1975 in earth and planetary sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his Ph.D. in planetary science from the University of Arizona in 1978. From 1978-80, he was a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at the Harvard College Observatory, and from 1980-1983, he continued as a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at MIT.
In 1983, he left MIT to join the U.S. Peace Corps, where he served for two years in Kenya teaching physics and astronomy. Upon his return to the U.S. in 1985, he became an assistant professor of physics at Lafayette College, in Easton, Pennsylvania, where he taught until his entry into the Jesuit order in 1989. He took vows as a Jesuit brother in 1991, and studied philosophy and theology at Loyola University - Chicago, and physics at the University of Chicago before his assignment to the Vatican Observatory in 1993.
In spring 2000, he held the MacLean Chair for Visiting Jesuit Scholars at St. Joseph's University, Philadelphia, and in 2006-2007, held the Loyola Chair at Fordham University, New York. He has also been a visiting scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center and a visiting professor at Loyola College, Baltimore, and Loyola University, Chicago.
Br. Consolmagno has served on the governing boards of the Meteoritical Society; the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) Division III Planetary Systems Science (secretary, 2000 - present) and Commission 16, Moons and Planets (president, 2003-2006); and the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences (chair, 2006-2007).
He has co-authored five astronomy books: “Turn Left at Orion” (with Dan M. Davis; Cambridge University Press, 1989); “Worlds Apart” (with Martha W. Schaefer; Prentice Hall, 1993); “The Way to the Dwelling of Light” (U of Notre Dame Press, 1998); “Brother Astronomer” (McGraw Hill, 2000); and “God's Mechanics” (Jossey-Bass, 2007). He also edited “The Heavens Proclaim” (Vatican Observatory Publications, 2009).
Br. Consolmagno is curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Castel Gandolfo, one of the largest in the world. His research explores the connections between meteorites and asteroids, and the origin and evolution of small bodies in the solar system. In 1996, he spent six weeks collecting meteorites with an NSF-sponsored team on the blue ice of Antarctica, and in 2000 he was honored by the IAU for his contributions to the study of meteorites and asteroids with the naming of asteroid 4597 Consolmagno.