Special Presentation and Book Release Preview: “The Alchemy of Us” 

Special Presentation and Book Release Preview: “The Alchemy of Us”

Cosponsored by Oblong Books & Music

WHO:  Dr. Ainissa Ramirez, former Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Yale and Science Evangelist

WHAT:  Pre-release Book Talk on technology that changed the world

WHEN:  Saturday March 14 at 4:00 pm

WHERE:  Wardell Room, Scoville Memorial Library, 38 Main Street, Salisbury, CT

CONTACT: 860-435-2838

COST: Free

SALISBURY Dr Ainissa Ramirez is a self proclaimed “science evangelist”. A Brown and Stanford University Graduate with stints at MIT and Yale, she is passionate about bringing both adults and young people to a greater understanding of science’s role  in the past and as a pathway for good in the future. A passionate advocate for STEM education she has been featured as a TED talk presenter, writer for Time, Scientific American, the American Scientist, and Forbes. She makes regular appearances on PBS’s SciTech Now.

Ramirez just completed a compelling new book The Alchemy of Us, wherein she examines eight inventions—clocks, steel rails, copper communication cables, photographic film, light bulbs, hard disks, scientific labware, and silicon chips—and reveals how they shaped the human experience. A native of Connecticut she is launching her national book tour in a special pre-release presentation Cosponsored by Oblong Books & Music at the Scoville Memorial Library on Saturday March 14 at 4:00 .

Ramirez tells the stories of the woman who sold time, the inventor who inspired Edison, and the hotheaded undertaker whose invention pointed the way to the computer. She describes, among other things, how our pursuit of precision in timepieces changed how we sleep; how the railroad helped commercialize Christmas; how the necessary brevity of the telegram influenced Hemingway’s writing style; and how a young chemist exposed the use of Polaroid’s cameras to create passbooks to track Black citizens in apartheid South Africa. These fascinating and inspiring stories offer new perspectives on our relationships with technologies.