University Book Store Presents Emily Levesque in Conversation With KUOW's Ross Reynolds

•
About the book: Humans from the earliest civilizations were spellbound by the night sky-craning their necks each night, they used the stars to orient themselves in the large, strange world around them. Stargazing is a pursuit that continues to fascinate us: from Copernicus to Carl Sagan, astronomers throughout history have spent their lives trying to answer the biggest questions in the universe. Now, award-winning astronomer Emily Levesque shares the stories of modern-day stargazers, the people willing to adventure across high mountaintops and to some of the most remote corners of the planet, all in the name of science.

From the lonely quiet of midnight stargazing to tall tales of wild bears loose in the observatory, The Last Stargazers is a love letter to astronomy and an affirmation of the crucial role that humans can and must play in the future of scientific discovery.

In this sweeping work of narrative science, Levesque shows how astronomers in this scrappy and evolving field are going beyond the machines to infuse creativity and passion into the stars and inspires us all to peer skyward in pursuit of the universe's secrets.
•
Emily Levesque is an astronomy professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Emily's research studies how the most massive stars in the universe evolve and die. She has observed for upward of fifty nights on many of the planet's largest telescopes and flown over the Antarctic stratosphere in an experimental aircraft for her research. Her academic accolades include the 2014 Annie Jump Cannon Prize, a 2017 Alfred P. Sloan fellowship, a 2019 Cottrell Scholar award, and the 2020 Newton Lacy Pierce Prize. She earned a bachelor's degree in physics from MIT and a PhD in astronomy from the University of Hawaii.

When she occasionally stumbles across some spare time, she attempts to spend it traveling, playing violin, skiing, messing with new recipes, or finishing triathlons very slowly. These plans are often waylaid by an old couch and a new book.
•
Ross Reynolds is KUOW's Executive Producer of Community Engagement. His projects include the person to person conversation event Ask A and Thats Debatable: Amazon is Good for Seattle.