Dava Sobel, a former New York Times science reporter, is the author of Longitude, Galileo's Daughter, and The Planets. In thirty years as a science journalist she has written for many magazines, including Audubon, Discover, Life and The New Yorker, served as a contributing editor to Harvard Magazine and Omni, and co-authored five books.

Longitude went through 29 hardcover printings before being reissued in October 2005 in a special tenth-anniversary edition with a foreword by astronaut Neil Armstrong. Sobel based Galileo's Daughter on 124 letters to Galileo from his eldest child, which she translated from the original Italian and used to elucidate Galileo's life work. Galileo's Daughter won the 1999 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for science and technology, a 2000 Christopher Award, and was a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in biography.

Sobel received the 2001 Individual Public Service Award from the National Science Board "for fostering awareness of science and technology among broad segments of the general public." She is the editor of the collection Best American Science Writing 2004.

The talk is the third in the Great Nonfiction Writers Lecture Series, presented biennially by the Nonfiction Writing Program in the Department of English, which will bring four prominent writers to campus this academic year.

Co-sponsored by • Zucker Family Endowment • C.V. Starr Foundation Lectureships Fund • Goldway/Shearer family • Modern Culture & Media and The Malcolm S. Forbes Center for Media and Culture • Africana Studies Department and Rites and Reason Theatre • Department of Theatre, Speech and Dance • Department of American Civilization • Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women • Center for Environmental Studies • Sarah Doyle Women's Center • Literary Arts Program • Committee on Science and Technology Studies