Richard Rhodes
Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Making of the Atomic Bomb,” will be the featured speaker at a lecture in Oak Ridge on Thursday.
Rhodes will be the guest at the 18th Annual Dick Smyser Community Lecture Series on Thursday, October 22, at the American Museum of Science and Energy.
The title of his presentation is “The Light of New Fires: Energy Challenges Yesterday and Today.” This presentation is jointly sponsored as part of Nuclear Science Week in the Knoxville/Oak Ridge area by UT Battelle LLC, the Oak Ridge Heritage and Preservation Association, and Friends of ORNL. The event is free of charge and will be held at the American Museum of Science and Energy at 300 South Tulane Avenue in Oak Ridge.
A reception will be held in the museum lobby starting at 5:30 p.m. (snacks will be served), and the lecture starts at 6:30 p.m. in the museum auditorium.
The author will be available after the lecture to autograph his books, some of which will be available from the gift shop at the museum.
“This talk should be of interest to the general public, but especially to residents of the Knoxville/Oak Ridge area,” a press release said.
The release said the country (and indeed the world) is in the midst of a wide-spread energy transition.
“Energy transitions are not new, and today the challenge is the need to limit greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels,” the release said. “Energy transitions take time because whole societies have to change their economies and infrastructure to accommodate new energy systems. Other centuries faced different challenges. This presentation will take the audience on a tour across 350 years of energy transitions.”
The release said Rhodes is the author or editor of 25 works of fiction, history, and memoir including “The Making of the Atomic Bomb,” which won a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award; “Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb,” which was one of three finalists for a Pulitzer Prize in history; “Arsenals of Folly,” about the last years of the Cold War; “The Twilight of the Bombs,” about the post-Cold War challenges of nuclear weapons and international policy; and, most recently, “Hell and Good Company,” a history of the Spanish Civil War which focuses on breakthroughs in military technology and medicine.
Rhodes has received numerous fellowships for research and writing, including grants from the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. He has been a host and correspondent for documentaries on public television’s “Frontline” and “American Experience” series. He has been a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and Stanford University. He lives near San Francisco, on Half Moon Bay.
UT-Battelle manages Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
The Oak Ridge Heritage and Preservation Association is an organization of people who are interested in Oak Ridge’s rich history.
The Friends of ORNL is an organization formed to facilitate and maintain a beneficial association of those who have an interest in ORNL.
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Mike Biddle (Actor) says
I for one, have never liked being lectured. Haha Not sure why this term is still used.
Peggy Tiner says
The term is still used because people know that it means a talk to present information about a subject in which the lecturer is knowledgeable. People who are interested in the subject attend the lecture to gain more understanding of the topic. I always enjoyed the lectures on subjects I was interested in back in college and even now in my dotage.