Keynote: Mirroring Melbourne – Reflections on the Great Melbourne Telescope & Melbourne Observatory
Presenter(s): Richard Gillespie
Affiliation(s): Museum of Victoria
Session details: Saturday, 2014-04-18 23:15:00, New York
Abstract
Erected at Melbourne Observatory in 1869, the Great Melbourne Telescope was the second largest telescope in the world, designed to explore the nature of the nebulae in the southern hemisphere skies. For many Melburnians in the 1870s and 1880s, the telescope was much more: it was tangible evidence of Melbourne’s greatness and claim to being the leading metropolis of the southern hemisphere. Richard Gillespie will reflect on the history of the telescope and on the larger scientific, practical and public role of Melbourne Observatory in the 19th century.
Biography
Dr Richard Gillespie trained as a historian of science at the University of Melbourne and University of Pennsylvania. He taught history of science and medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Deakin University and the University of Melbourne before joining Museum Victoria in 1990, where he is now Head of the Humanities Department. He has been a Fulbright Scholar, been awarded a Mellon Fellowship, Gordon Darling Fellowship, and received the Henry Schuman Prize of the History of Science Society (US). He is the author of The Great Melbourne Telescope (Museum Victoria, 2011) and Manufacturing Knowledge: A History of the Hawthorne Experiments (Cambridge University Press, 1987).