Previous Chairs

The NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, Exploration, and Scientific Innovation at the Kluge Center has supported scholars from a wide range of academic backgrounds. The following materials and presentations will guide you in getting to know the scholarly work of previous chairs.

Bruce Clarke is the Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of Literature and Science in the Department of English at Texas Tech University. His research focuses on 19th and 20th century literature and science, with special interests in systems theory, narrative theory, and ecology. At the Kluge Center, he worked on a project titled “Astrobiology, Ecology and the Rise of Gaia Theory.” The Gaia theory postulates that the Earth’s living and nonliving components form a self-regulating planetary system.

Featured Video

April 23, 2019

On Christmas Eve, 1968, the NASA crew on Apollo 8 took the Earthrise photograph, the first photo of the earth from the perspective of the moon. It was immediately influential, and the first Earth Day followed soon after, in the spring of 1970. Bruce Clarke moderated a discussion about the rich cultural impact of the photo on the U.S. space program and the environmental movement.

Blog Post

The following post appeared in the Library of Congress blog—Insights: the Scholarly Work of the John W. Kluge Center. This blog shares the knowledge gleaned from the research of top scholars in the humanities and social sciences in residence at the Library of Congress.

Reflecting on Earthrise
On April 23, 2019 Bruce Clarke hosted a discussion titled Earthrise: Celebrating the Photograph that Changed (How We View) the World at the Library of Congress. In this post he is interviewed about the Earthrise photograph and its meaning.

Print Materials

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Posthuman by Bruce Clarke (Editor); Manuela Rossini (Editor)
Call Number: PN56.T37 C36 2017
ISBN: 9781107086203
Published/Created: 2016-12-15
The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Posthuman is the first work of its kind to gather diverse critical treatments of the posthuman and posthumanism together in a single volume. Fifteen scholars from six different countries address the historical and aesthetic dimensions of posthuman figures alongside posthumanism as a new paradigm in the critical humanities. The three parts and their chapters trace the history of the posthuman in literature and other media, including film and video games, and identify major political, philosophical, and techno-scientific issues raised in the literary and cinematic narratives of the posthuman and posthumanist discourses.
Earth, Life, and System by Bruce Clarke (Editor)
Call Number: QH373 .E27 2015
ISBN: 9780823265244
Published/Created: 2015-07-01
Exploring the broad implications of evolutionary theorist Lynn Margulis's work, this collection brings together specialists across a range of disciplines, from paleontology, molecular biology, evolutionary theory, and geobiology to developmental systems theory, archaeology, history of science, cultural science studies, and literature and science. Addressing the multiple themes that animated Margulis's science, the essays within take up, variously, astrobiology and the origin of life, ecology and symbiosis from the microbial to the planetary scale, the coupled interactions of earthly environments and evolving life in Gaia theory and earth system science, and the connections of these newer scientific ideas to cultural and creative productions. Bruce Clarke studies the convergence of ecosystem ecology, systems theory, and science fiction between the 1960s and the 1980s.
Neocybernetics and Narrative by Bruce Clarke
Call Number: PN212 .C55 2014
ISBN: 9780816691005
Published/Created: 2014-09-15
Reconceiving interrelations among subjects, media, significations, and the social, this study demonstrates second-order systems theory's potential to provide fresh insights into the familiar topics of media studies and narrative theory. A pioneer of systems narratology, Clarke offers readers a synthesis of the neocybernetic theories of cognition formulated by biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, incubated by cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster, and cultivated in Niklas Luhmann's social systems theory. From this foundation, he interrogates media theory and narrative theory through a critique of information theory in favor of autopoietic conceptions of cognition. Clarke's purview includes examinations of novels (Mrs. Dalloway and Mind of My Mind), movies (Avatar, Memento, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), and even Aramis, Bruno Latour's idiosyncratic meditation on a failed plan for an automated subway. Clarke declares the era of the cyborg to have ended, laid to rest as the ontology of technical objects is brought into differential coordination with operations of living, psychic, and social systems. The second-order discourse of cognition destabilizes the usual sense of cognition as conscious awareness, revealing the possibility of nonconscious and nonhuman forms of sentience.
The Routledge Companion to Literature and Science by Bruce Clarke (Editor); Manuela Rossini (Editor)
Call Number: PN55 .R68 2011
ISBN: 9780415495257
Published/Created: 2010-08-27
With forty-four newly commissioned articles from an international cast of leading scholars, this book traces the network of connections among literature, science, technology, mathematics, and medicine. Ranging from classical origins and modern revolutions to current developments in cultural science studies and the posthumanities, this volume offers a comprehensive resource for undergraduates, postgraduates, and researchers.
Posthuman Metamorphosis by Bruce Clarke
Call Number: PN1995.9.C9 C53 2008
ISBN: 9780823228508
Published/Created: 2008-04-15
Posthuman Metamorphosis examines modern and postmodern stories of corporeal transformation through interlocking frames of posthumanism, narratology, and second-order systems theory. New media generate new metamorphs. New stories have emerged from cybernetic displacements of life, sensation, or intelligence from human beings to machines. But beyond the vogue for the cyborg and the cybernetic mash-up of the organic and the mechanical, Posthuman Metamorphosis develops neocybernetic systems theories illuminating alternative narratives that elicit autopoietic and symbiotic visions of the posthuman. Tracing the posthuman intuitions of both pre- and post-cybernetic metamorphs, it demonstrates the viability of second-order systems theories for narrative theory, media theory, cultural science studies, and literary criticism.
Dora Marsden and Early Modernism by Bruce Clarke
Call Number: PN5123.M345 C57 1996
ISBN: 0472106465
Published/Created: 1996-01-01

Lucianne Walkowicz is an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. She studies the ethics of Mars exploration, stellar magnetic activity, how stars influence a planet’s suitability as a host for alien life, and how to use advanced computing to discover unusual events in large astronomical data sets. Walkowicz is the founding director of the LSSTC Data Science Fellowship Program, an initiative to provide astronomy graduate students with training in advanced computing and coordinates the community of science collaborations for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. As a scholar in residence at the Kluge Center, Walkowicz worked on a project titled, “Fear of a Green Planet: Inclusive Systems of Thought for Human Exploration of Mars.”

Featured Video

September 27, 2018

This symposium, hosted by Lucianne Walkowicz, the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology at the Library's John W. Kluge Center, featured panel discussions on how current narratives, policies and laws frame human exploration and presence in space. The panels included a diverse group of thought leaders including astrobiologists, anthropologists, policy experts, artists and journalists whose work has relevance to the human exploration of Mars.

Print Materials

The following title links to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

A Velocity of Being by Maria Popova (Editor); Claudia Bedrick (Editor); David Remnick (Preface by)
Call Number: Z1037.A1 V45 2018
ISBN: 9781592702282
Published/Created: 2018-12-31
In these pages, some of today's most wonderful culture-makers--writers, artists, scientists, entrepreneurs, and philosophers--reflect on the joys of reading, how books broaden and deepen human experience, and the ways in which the written word has formed their own character. Astronomist Lucianne Walkowicz was one of the contributors for the letters to a young reader. Among other contributions are letters from Jane Goodall, Neil Gaiman, Jerome Bruner, Shonda Rhimes, Ursula K. Le Guin, Yo-Yo Ma, Judy Blume, Lena Dunham, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Jacqueline Woodson, as well as a ninety-eight-year-old Holocaust survivor, a pioneering oceanographer, and Italy's first woman in space.

Luis A. Campos, a historian of science, is Associate Professor in the History Department at the University of New Mexico and a Senior Fellow with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy. As a scholar in residence at the Kluge Center, Campos examined the intersection between astrobiology and synthetic biology.

Featured Video

The Emergence of Life: In the Lab Symposium, September 15, 2016

Presentations on the emergence of life in the lab, including "Minerals, Organics, and the Origins of Life," "Synthesizing Life: From Early Origins to New Natures" and "Analysis: Synthesis." Luis Campos presented his work on the origins of life, how we came to know it, and what it means.

Blog Post

Life as it Could Be: A Conversation with Luis Campos
Fourth Astrobiology Chair Luis Campos began his tenure at the Kluge Center on October 3, 2016. He spent his fellowship year at the Kluge Center studying the history of synthetic biology and its overlap with astrobiology. He sat down with Kluge staff member Dan Turello to talk about his work.

Print Materials

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

Radium and the Secret of Life by Luis A. Campos
Call Number: QD181.R1 C36 2015
ISBN: 9780226238272
Published/Created: 2015-04-03
Before the hydrogen bomb indelibly associated radioactivity with death, many chemists, physicians, botanists, and geneticists believed that radium might hold the secret to life. Physicists and chemists early on described the wondrous new element in lifelike terms such as "decay" and "half-life," and made frequent references to the "natural selection" and "evolution" of the elements. Meanwhile, biologists of the period used radium in experiments aimed at elucidating some of the most basic phenomena of life, including metabolism and mutation. From the creation of half-living microbes in the test tube to charting the earliest histories of genetic engineering, this book highlights previously unknown interconnections between the history of the early radioactive sciences and the sciences of heredity. Equating the transmutation of radium with the biological transmutation of living species, biologists saw in metabolism and mutation properties that reminded them of the new element. These initially provocative metaphoric links between radium and life proved remarkably productive and ultimately led to key biological insights into the origin of life, the nature of heredity, and the structure of the gene.
Heredity Explored by Staffan Müller-Wille (Editor); Christina Brandt (Editor); Diane B. Paul; Hamish G. Spencer; Ulrike Vedder
Call Number: QH428 .H47 2016
ISBN: 9780262034432
Published/Created: 2016-07-08
This book examines the wide range of scientific and social arenas in which the concept of inheritance gained relevance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although genetics emerged as a scientific discipline during this period, the idea of inheritance also played a role in a variety of medical, agricultural, industrial, and political contexts. The book addresses heredity in national debates over identity, kinship, and reproduction; biopolitical conceptions of heredity, degeneration, and gender; agroindustrial contexts for newly emerging genetic rationality; heredity and medical research; and the genealogical constructs and experimental systems of genetics that turned heredity into a representable and manipulable object. Taken together, these essays show that a history of heredity includes much more than the history of genetics, and that knowledge of heredity was always more than the knowledge formulated as Mendelism. It was the broader public discourse of heredity in all its contexts that made modern genetics possible.
Outsider Scientists by Oren Harman (Editor); Michael R. Dietrich (Editor)
Call Number: QH26 .O98 2013
ISBN: 022607840X
Published/Created: 2013-12-11
This book describes the transformative role played by "outsiders" in the growth of the modern life sciences. Biology, which occupies a special place between the exact and human sciences, has historically attracted many thinkers whose primary training was in other fields: mathematics, physics, chemistry, linguistics, philosophy, history, anthropology, engineering, and even literature. This volume brings together eighteen thought-provoking biographical essays of some of the most remarkable outsiders of the modern era, each written by an authority in the respective field. From Noam Chomsky using linguistics to answer questions about brain architecture, to Erwin Schrödinger contemplating DNA as a physicist would, to Drew Endy tinkering with Biobricks to create new forms of synthetic life, the outsiders featured here make clear just how much there is to gain from disrespecting conventional boundaries. Innovation, it turns out, often relies on importing new ideas from other fields. Without its outsiders, modern biology would hardly be recognizable.

Nathanial Comfort is a historian of recent science, biology and biomedicine. As a scholar in residence at the Kluge Center, Comfort examined the history of the genomic revolution in origin-of-life research, addressing one of the central areas of inquiry in the field of astrobiology: how life began and evolved here on Earth.

Featured Video

March 17, 2016

Nathaniel Comfort convenes four distinguished scientists on-stage for a live oral history interview about the origins of the RNA world, the world at the dawn of life, before DNA, arising nearly four billion years ago.

Blog Post

Theories on the Origins of the Life: An Interview with Astrobiology Chair Nathaniel Comfort
In March 2016, Nathaniel Comfort interviewed four pioneering scientists about their roles in developing key models for the origins of life. The program titled “The Origins of the RNA World,” was part of Comfort’s year-long residency at the Kluge Center working on a book project about the genomic revolution’s impact on origins of life research. In this post Comfort discusses the history of genetics, its effects on origins of life research, and his time at the Library of Congress.

Print Materials

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

The Science of Human Perfection by Nathaniel C. Comfort
Call Number: RB155 .C66 2012
ISBN: 9780300169911
Published/Created: 2012-09-25
Almost daily we hear news stories, advertisements, and scientific reports promising that genetic medicine will make us live longer, enable doctors to identify and treat diseases before they harm us, and individualize our medical care. But surprisingly, a century ago eugenicists were making the same promises. This book traces the history of the promises of medical genetics and of the medical dimension of eugenics. While mindful of the benefits of genetic medicine, the book also considers social and ethical issues that cast troublesome shadows over these fields. Keeping his focus on America, Nathaniel Comfort introduces the community of scientists, physicians, and public health workers who have contributed to the development of medical genetics from the nineteenth century to today. He argues that medical genetics is closely related to eugenics, and indeed that the two cannot be fully understood separately. He also examines how the desire to relieve suffering and to improve ourselves genetically, though noble, may be subverted. History makes clear that as patients and consumers we must take ownership of genetic medicine, using it intelligently, knowledgeably, and skeptically.
The Panda's Black Box by Nathaniel C. Comfort (Editor); Daniel J. Kevles (Foreword by); Scott Gilbert; Edward J. Larson; Jane Maienschein; Michael Ruse; Robert M. Young
Call Number: BS652 .P35 2007
ISBN: 9780801885990
Published/Created: 2007-05-04
The debate over Intelligent Design (ID) seemingly represents an extension of the fundamental conflict between creationists and evolutionists. ID proponents, drawing on texts such as Darwin's Black Box and Of Pandas and People, urge schools to "teach the controversy" in biology class alongside evolution. The scientific mainstream has reacted with fury, branding Intelligent Design as pseudoscience and its advocates as religious fanatics. But stridency misses the point, argues Nathaniel Comfort. In The Panda's Black Box, Comfort joins five other intellectuals --including Daniel Kevles and Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Larson-- to explain the roots of the controversy and explore the intellectual, social, and cultural factors that continue to shape it.
The Tangled Field by Nathaniel C. Comfort
Call Number: QH429.2.M38 C66 2001
ISBN: 0674004566
Published/Created: 2001-06-30
This biographical study illuminates one of the most important yet misunderstood figures in the history of science. Barbara McClintock (1902-1992), a geneticist who integrated classical genetics with microscopic observations of the behavior of chromosomes, was regarded as a genius and as an unorthodox, nearly incomprehensible thinker. In 1946, she discovered mobile genetic elements, which she called "controlling elements." Thirty-seven years later, she won a Nobel Prize for this work, becoming the third woman to receive an unshared Nobel in science. Since then, McClintock has become an emblem of feminine scientific thinking and the tragedy of narrow-mindedness and bias in science. Using McClintock's research notes, newly available correspondence, and dozens of interviews with McClintock and others, Comfort argues that McClintock's work was neither ignored in the 1950s nor wholly accepted two decades later. Nor was McClintock marginalized by scientists; throughout the decades of her alleged rejection, she remained a distinguished figure in her field. Comfort replaces the "McClintock myth" with a new story, rich with implications for our understanding of women in science and scientific creativity.

Steven J. Dick is an astronomer, author, and historian who served as the chief historian for NASA from 2003 to 2009 and formerly served as an astronomer and historian of science at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. As a scholar in residence at the Kluge Center, Dick explored the critical issues and optimal approaches to studying the societal impact of the discovery of microbial or complex life beyond Earth.

Featured Videos

January 28, 2014

The outgoing and incoming Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chairs in Astrobiology -- David H. Grinspoon and Steven J. Dick -- discussed the societal implications of the search for life in the universe.

June 18, 2014

Discoveries of new, potentially habitable worlds beyond our solar system raise challenging questions for humanity vis-a-vis faith, human nature, reality and religion. This discussion addresses the complex intersection of astrobiology and theology as part of the Kluge Center's astrobiology program.

Blog Post

Former Astrobiology Chair Steven J. Dick Receives 2019 PROSE Award
The Kluge Center is proud to congratulate Steven J. Dick, 2013 Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology on winning a 2019 PROSE award for Cosmology and Astronomy from the Association of American Publishers (AAP).

Print Materials

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

America in Space by Steven J. Dick; United States, National Aeronautics and Space Administration Staff (Contribution by); Neil Armstrong (Footnotes by); Robert Jacobs; Constance Moore; Bertram Ulrich; Ulrich Bertram
Call Number: TL521.312 .A628 2007
ISBN: 9780810993730
Published/Created: 2007-10-01
For more than a century before 1957, scientists and adventurers dreamed about the exploration of space and designed rockets and vehicles to make it possible, but the real space age began on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite. Until then, America's space exploration had been entrusted to the military, but immediately following Sputnik, the United States began to plan for the first civilian space agency. NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) was officially born on July 29, 1958. America in Space is a visual history of NASA, from its early days as a pioneer in supersonic flight, through the first manned space missions of the 1960s, to the shuttle and international space station missions that are still underway. It also covers NASA's exploration of the Solar System using unmanned probes and the imagery from satellite telescopes like Hubble.
The Biological Universe by Steven J. Dick
Call Number: QB54 .D47 1999
ISBN: 052166361X
Published/Created: 1999-12-28
Throughout the twentieth century, from the furor over Percival Lowell's claim of canals on Mars to the sophisticated Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, otherworldly life has often intrigued and occasionally consumed science and the public. The Biological Universe provides a rich and colorful history of the attempts during the twentieth century to answer questions such as whether "biological law" reigns throughout the universe and whether there are other histories, religions, and philosophies outside those on Earth. Covering a broad range of topics, including the search for life in the solar system, the origins of life, UFOs, and aliens in science fiction, Steven J. Dick shows how the concept of extraterrestrial intelligence is a world view of its own, a "biophysical cosmology" that seeks confirmation no less than physical views of the universe.
Cosmos and Culture by Steven J. Dick (Editor); National Aeronautics and Space Administration Staff (Editor); Mark L. Lupisella (Editor)
Call Number: QB981 .C8263 2009
ISBN: 9780160831195
Published/Created: 2010-02-12
During the last 50 years, coincident with the Space Age, cosmic evolution has been recognized as the master narrative of the universe, history writ large. Cosmic evolution includes physical, biological, and cultural evolution, and of these the latter is by far the most rapid. In this volume, authors with diverse backgrounds in science, history, anthropology, and more, consider culture in the context of the cosmos. How does our knowledge of cosmic evolution affect terrestrial culture? Conversely, how does our knowledge of cultural evolution affect our thinking about possible cultures in the cosmos? Are life, mind, and culture of fundamental significance to the grand story of the cosmos that has generated its own self-understanding through science, rational reasoning, and mathematics? Might this lead to cultural evolution on a large enough scale to allow the universe to both create and steer itself toward its own destiny?
Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight by Steven J. Dick; Roger D. Launius
Call Number: TL789.8.U5 C75 2018
ISBN: 9781536136951
Published/Created: 2018-01-01
At a May 1981 ''Proseminar in Space History'' held at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum (NASM) in Washington, D.C., historians came together to consider the state of the discipline of space history. The community of scholars interested in the history of spaceflight was not large; previously, well-meaning but untrained aficionados consumed with artifacts had dominated the field, to the exclusion of the larger context. At a fundamental level, this proseminar represented a ''declaration of independence'' for what might be called the ''new aerospace history.'' In retrospect, it may be interpreted as marking the rise of space history as a recognizable subdiscipline within the field of U.S. history. Bringing together a diverse collection of scholars to review the state of the art in space history, this proseminar helped in a fundamental manner to define the field and to chart a course for future research. Its participants set about the task of charting a course for collecting, preserving, and disseminating the history of space exploration within a larger context of space policy and technology.
Discovery and Classification in Astronomy by Steven J. Dick
Call Number: QB61 .D53 2013
ISBN: 9781107033610
Published/Created: 2013-09-09
Astronomical discovery involves more than detecting something previously unseen. The reclassification of Pluto as a dwarf planet in 2006, and the controversy it generated, shows that discovery is a complex and ongoing process - one comprising various stages of research, interpretation and understanding. Ranging from Galileo's observation of Jupiter's satellites, Saturn's rings and star clusters, to Herschel's nebulae and the modern discovery of quasars and pulsars, Steven J. Dick's comprehensive history identifies the concept of 'extended discovery' as the engine of progress in astronomy. The text traces more than 400 years of telescopic observation, exploring how the signal discoveries of new astronomical objects relate to and inform one another, and why controversies such as Pluto's reclassification are commonplace in the field.
The Impact of Discovering Life Beyond Earth by Steven J. Dick (Editor)
Call Number: QB54 .I47 2015
ISBN: 9781107109988
Published/Created: 2015-10-26
The search for life in the Universe, once the domain of science fiction, is now a robust research program with a well-defined roadmap, from studying the extremes of life on Earth to exploring the possible niches for life in the Solar System and discovering thousands of planets far beyond it. In addition to constituting a major scientific endeavor, astrobiology is one of the most popular topics in astronomy, and is of growing interest to a broad community of thinkers from across the academic spectrum. In this volume, distinguished philosophers, theologians, anthropologists, historians and scientists discuss the big questions about how the discovery of extraterrestrial life, whether intelligent or microbial, would impact society.
Life on Other Worlds by Steven J. Dick
Call Number: QB54 .D475 1998
ISBN: 0521620120
Published/Created: 1998-09-28
From the furor over Percival Lowell's claim of canals on Mars to the controversial rock from Mars and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), the prospect of otherworldly life has often titillated and occasionally consumed science and the public. The search for planetary systems, the quest to explain UFOs, and inquiries into the origin of life have fueled an abundance of popular and scientific literature. They have also provided Hollywood with fodder for some of the most popular films of our time, including ET, Aliens, Independence Day, and Contact. Life on Other Worlds chronicles the history of the twentieth-century extraterrestrial debate. Putting the latest findings and heated controversies into a broader historical context, Steven Dick documents how the concept of extraterrestrial intelligence is a world view of its own--a "biophysical cosmology" that seeks confirmation no less than physical views of the Universe. The debate rests at the very limits of science, and attempts at confirmation only illuminate the nature of science itself. Dick shows that appreciating the history of the debate enables a better understanding of the nature of science, and is central to any forward-looking view of religion and philosophy.
Plurality of Worlds by Steven J. Dick
Call Number: QB54 .D5
ISBN: 0521243084
Published/Created: 1982-03-31
This is a history of the debate over the question of extraterrestrial life from Classical Greece to the mid-eighteenth century. Using many primary and secondary sources, this book analyses why such great thinkers as Aristotle, Aquinas, Ockham, Galileo, Kepler, Huygens, and Kant thought the debate over the plurality of worlds a subject for serious discussion. Steven Dick shows how conflicting arguments from science, philosophy, and theology gradually converged to the same opinion--that intelligent life must fill the universe.
Remembering the Space Age by Steven J. Dick (Editor); National Aeronautics and Space Administration Staff (Compiled by)
Call Number: TL788.5 .R46 2008
ISBN: 9780160817236
Published/Created: 2009-02-10
Proceedings of October 2007 Conference, sponsored by the NASA History Division and the National Air and Space Museum, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik 1 launch in October 1957 and the dawn of the space age.

David Grinspoon, a researcher in planetary science, held the inaugural Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology. As a scholar in residence at the Kluge Center, Grinspoon used the Library’s collections to research and write his book on the "Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet's Future". He played an important role as an ambassador for astrobiology as chair, meeting with members of Congress, delivering several high-profile lectures, and hosting a day-long symposium on the longevity of human civilization featuring scientists, science fiction authors, and journalists.

Featured Videos

October 31, 2013

David Grinspoon examines choices facing humanity as we enter the Anthropocene Era, the epoch when human activities are becoming a defining characteristic of the physical nature and functioning of Earth.

June 5, 2014

The notion of wilderness as a pristine natural environment untouched by human activity is a powerful narrative in discourses of global climate change and literature. The wilderness conjures up feeling of nostalgia, tranquility, and a desire for active conservation. But has wilderness truly ever existed? And what role do both the realities and myths of human interaction with the wild have in framing human thoughts about place, time, and history? Astrobiologist David Grinspoon and literary scholar Charlotte Rogers discuss how these ideas impact their research in both the scientific study of the history of the Earth and the history of literature about the Amazonian rainforest.

Blog Post

The following post appeared in the Library of Congress blog—“Inquiring Minds" Series. This series shares the knowledge gleaned from the research of top scholars in the humanities and social sciences in residence at the Library of Congress.

Inquiring Minds: An Interview with Astrobiologist David H. Grinspoon

Print Materials

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

Venus Revealed by David H. Grinspoon; Jeffrey Robbins (Editor)
Call Number: QB621 .G75 1997
ISBN: 0201406551
Published/Created: 1996-12-01
Early robot probes sent by Russian and American scientists had given us some tantalizing but fragmentary glimpses of the surface and atmosphere, hinting at some of the most exotic conditions seen in the solar system. Magellan showed a planet full of beautiful landscapes, some eerily familiar and some completely unexpected - a world of active volcanoes, shining mountains, and even river valleys carved by torrents of flowing lava. Venus may once have had a wet, temperate, comfortable climate, much like Earth's. What happened to turn it into a hostile, burning, acid world? Our twin has important tales to tell us regarding several of Earth's most pressing environmental problems, including ozone destruction, global warming, and acid rain. In Venus Revealed, David Grinspoon makes a compelling case for comparative planetology as an important tool for gaining knowledge that is vital for our long-term survival on our own planet. He re-examines the uniqueness of our own Earth in light of the recent Magellan findings, while also raising the provocative questions: Did a runaway greenhouse effect transform Venus into the burning oven she is today? By treating Venus as a "controlled experiment," what can we learn from her that will help us survive on Earth?
Lonely Planets by David H. Grinspoon
Call Number: QB54 .G74 2003
ISBN: 0060185406
Published/Created: 2003-11-04
In Lonely Planets, Grinspoon explores the big questions with unusual authority, passion and panache: How widespread are life and intelligence in the cosmos? Is life on Earth an accident or in some sense the 'purpose' of this universe? And how can we, working from a sample size of one, even begin to think intelligently about life on distant planets? He gives us new ways of thinking about life and outlines his controversial view that Venus, not Mars, is the best candidate for finding nearby life. Examining scientific data, reviewing historical records and sympathetically analyzing folk beliefs, Grinspoon presents a comprehensive history of ideas about extraterrestrial life and offers provocative new scientific speculations.
Earth in Human Hands by David Grinspoon
Call Number: GF47 .G75 2016
ISBN: 9781455589128
Published/Created: 2016-12-06
For the first time in Earth's history, our planet is experiencing a confluence of rapidly accelerating changes prompted by one species: humans. Climate change is only the most visible of the modifications we've made--up until this point, inadvertently--to the planet. And our current behavior threatens not only our own future but that of countless other creatures. By comparing Earth's story to those of other planets, astrobiologist David Grinspoon shows what a strange and novel development it is for a species to evolve to build machines, and ultimately, global societies with world-shaping influence. Without minimizing the challenges of the next century, Grinspoon suggests that our present moment is not only one of peril, but also great potential, especially when viewed from a 10,000-year perspective. Our species has surmounted the threat of extinction before, thanks to our innate ingenuity and ability to adapt, and there's every reason to believe we can do so again. Our challenge now is to awaken to our role as a force of planetary change, and to grow into this task. We must become graceful planetary engineers, conscious shapers of our environment and caretakers of Earth's biosphere. This is a perspective that begs us to ask not just what future do we want to avoid, but what do we seek to build? What kind of world do we want? Are humans the worst thing or the best thing to ever happen to our planet? Today we stand at a pivotal juncture, and the answer will depend on the choices we make.
Chasing New Horizons by Alan Stern; David Grinspoon
Call Number: TL799.P69 S74 2018
ISBN: 9781250098962
Published/Created: 2018-05-01
On July 14, 2015, something amazing happened. More than 3 billion miles from Earth, a small NASA spacecraft called New Horizons screamed past Pluto at more than 32,000 miles per hour, focusing its instruments on the long mysterious icy worlds of the Pluto system, and then continued on its journey out into the beyond. Nothing like this has occurred in a generation--a raw exploration of new worlds unparalleled since NASA's Voyager missions--and nothing like it is planned to happen again. The photos that New Horizons sent back to Earth graced the front pages of newspapers on all 7 continents, and NASA's website for the mission received more than 2 billion hits in the days surrounding the flyby. At a time when so many think our most historic achievements are in the past, the most distant planetary exploration ever attempted not only succeeded but made history and captured the world's imagination. How did this happen? Chasing New Horizons is the story of the men and women behind the mission: of their decades-long commitment; of the political fights within and outside of NASA; of the sheer human ingenuity it took to design, build, and fly the mission.

NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, Exploration, and Scientific Innovation

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April 23, 2019

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September 27, 2018

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The Emergence of Life: In the Lab Symposium, September 15, 2016

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March 17, 2016

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January 28, 2014

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