Public Lectures

The Last Wednesday lecture series, co-sponsored by and held at the Senior Center, greets the fall with a schedule of great speakers. Join us for one or more of these fascinating free talks, open to the entire community. For more information about the series, contact Paul Brockman.

The Senior Center is located at 1180 Pepsi Place in Charlottesville. The program is free and open to the public. For more information, call the Society at (434) 296-1492 or the Senior Center, Inc. at (434) 974-7756.

Senior Center, Inc. is a nonprofit organization serving the greater Charlottesville area. It is the only nationally accredited senior center in the state. Its mission is to involve, enrich and empower seniors in the community. If you would like more information on the Senior Center, contact Philip Day at 974-7756.

February 27, 2008, 2 p.m.:  Rick Britton: "Thomas Jefferson & Science"

In his day, Thomas Jefferson became the preeminent American patron, or cultivator, of science. During the early years of the republic, science was dominated by gentlemen amateurs such as Jefferson, men for whom the pursuit of science was an avocation. (It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century, in fact, that specialization and professionalism in science took over, and the word “scientist” came into wide usage.) “[Jefferson’s] facts were not always right,” wrote Edwin T. Martin, “nor his conclusions always correct. . . . There were times when he perhaps over-stressed immediate, utilitarian values. And certain of his preconceptions obscured his grasp of the truth.” Nonetheless, over the course of his lifetime, Thomas Jefferson applied his analytical mind to such fields as agriculture, anthropology, archaeology, astronomy, botany, cryptography, ethnology, linguistics, mechanical inventions, meteorology, and paleontology. In several of these realms of science Jefferson's contributions were significant.