Harvard Science Book Talk: Andrew H. Knoll, in conversation with Peter Girguis, "A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters"

Date: 

Wednesday, June 9, 2021, 5:00pm

Where Online: https://www.harvard.com/event/virtual_event_andrew_h._knoll/
When June 7, 2021 @5:00PM
Organization/Sponsor Harvard Division of Science, Harvard Library, and Harvard Book Store
Speaker(s) Andrew H. Knoll (Harvard) and Peter Girguis (Harvard)
Cost free
Contact Info science_lectures@fas.harvard.edu

 

Prof. Knoll and Prof. Girguis photos, book cover

Odds are, where you’re standing was once cooking under a roiling sea of lava, crushed by a towering sheet of ice, rocked by a nearby meteor strike, or perhaps choked by poison gases, drowned beneath ocean, perched atop a mountain range, or roamed by fearsome monsters. Probably most or even all of the above.

The story of our home planet and the organisms spread across its surface is far more spectacular than any Hollywood blockbuster, filled with enough plot twists to rival a bestselling thriller. But only recently have we begun to piece together the whole mystery into a coherent narrative. Drawing on his decades of field research and up-to-the-minute understanding of the latest science, renowned geologist Andrew H. Knoll delivers a rigorous yet accessible biography of Earth, charting our home planet's epic 4.6 billion-year story. Placing twenty first-century climate change in deep context, A Brief History of Earth is an indispensable look at where we’ve been and where we’re going. For this talk, Prof. Knoll will be joined in conversation by Prof. Peter Girguis.

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Andrew Knoll is the Fisher Professor of Natural History at Harvard University. His research focuses on the early evolution of life, Earth’s environmental history, and, especially, the interconnections between the two. For the past decade, he has served on the science team for NASA’s MER mission to Mars.

Peter R. Girguis is Professor of Organisimic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. His research resides at the crossroads of microbial ecology, physiology, and biogeochemistry, and as such is highly interdisciplinary.

For more information and videos of Harvard Science Book Talks, see https://science.fas.harvard.edu/book-talks