February 2009

February 6: Monthly Meeting

Climbing the Stairs, Women Who Reached For the Stars

Padma Venkatraman
Dr. Padma Venkatraman, Director Diversity Affairs office, URI.

Dr. Venkatraman is the author of "Climbing the Stairs", "Double Stars The Story of Caroline Herschel" and "Women Mathematicians." She will speak about the life and times of Caroline Herschel and also touch on the struggles that other women pioneers have undergone to achieve their goals. Copies of her book will be on sale after the talk.

Dr. Venkatraman is going to bring some of her books to sell and will of course autograph them. Here is the list along with the prices.

  1. Double Stars: The Story of Caroline Herschel (biography) $30
  2. Women Mathematicians (biographies of Maria Agnesi, Emilie du Chatalet, Emmy Noether, Mary Sommerville, Ada Lovelace, and Sonya Kovalevskaya) $30
  3. Mathematwist: Number Tales From Around The World (multicultural collection of mathematical folktales for children aged 8-12) $15
  4. Climbing the Stairs (a novel that has strong women in it but nothing about astronomy or mathematics, but it's the top of my list so I always take it whereever I go) $20
Padma T. Venkatraman,http://www.cliofindia.com/padma/
The Winter Circle

The Winter Circle

: By Dave Huestis
Just as the summer sky has the Summer Triangle, the winter sky has its own special asterism, and this one is huge and includes a total of eight bright stars. It’s called the Winter Circle or Winter Hexagon. I’ll explain why you can get both shapes from the stars.

Ceres

: By Glenn Chaple
What makes amateur astronomy such a wonderful hobby is the diversity of activities it offers. We can make telescopes, dabble in astrophotography, or simply go outside with binoculars and notch a few Messier objects. One of my favorite astronomical pastimes is observing asteroids.

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