The ACSJ Presents: Ron Garret History of Science, Part 1: The Story of the Atom

The ACSJ Presents: Ron Garret History of Science, Part 1: The Story of the Atom

Today it is considered common knowledge that matter is made of atoms. What is not as widely known is that this was still controversial as recently as 100 years ago. It took nearly 2000 years from the time that the atomic theory was first proposed by Democritus to the time when it first began to be taken seriously, and another 300 years before it become the accepted point of view. This is the story of how scientists figured out that atoms exist, and why it was controversial for so long. This presentation was inspired by and expands on Scott Nickle’s presentation in June about how scientists figured out that water was H2O.

Ron Garret, Ph.D. is a computer scientist, entrepreneur, filmmaker and blogger. He received his Ph.D. from Virginia Tech in 1991 specializing in AI and autonomous vehicles. The first half of his career was spent at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab where he worked on the research program that led to the first Mars Rover mission, as well as the first autonomous interplanetary spacecraft. In 2000 he took a year off to go work for an obscure Silicon Valley startup company called Google, where he was the lead engineer on the first release of AdWords. He has been a principal in four startup companies, including one that was acquired pre-launch by Richard Branson. His feature-length documentary about homelessness, “But for the Grace of God?” is available on iTunes and Amazon. He is currently founder and CEO of Spark Innovations, a company that specializes in security and cryptography.

Schedule:
We Start at 7:15pm
15min - Introduction and Calendar
45min - Speaker
15min - Q&A, Wrap Up
10min - Breakdown and hangout.