Annual Report 2003 - Vatican Observatory

VATICAN OBSERVATORYon “Galileo’s Universe Revisited.” • In the series Fondamenta, Senza Più in Venice,Italy, in October spoke on “Science and Faith: The Limits and the Hopes.” • Served onthe organizing committee and delivered a lecture at the seminar on “Emergence in Science,Philosophy and Theology” at La Armonia, Mar del Plata, Province of Buenos Aires,Argentina. • Spent a week in October as Visiting Scholar at the University of Washington,Seattle. While there, in addition to the John and Jessie Danz Public Lecture,gave the following lectures: “Origins and Creation” to the Astrobiology Seminar;“History and Significance of the Vatican Observatory Summer Schools” to the Astronomyfaculty and students; a talk on Galileo to the History of Science class; “The ModernChurch and the Perennial Galileo” to the Astronomy Colloquium; a talk on the approachof a scientist today to the science-religion dialogue to the Benefactors Club;“The Roots of an Anti-science Bias in Renaissance Italy” to the Italian Studies Program;“Galileo and Bellarmine: Eyeball to Eyeball” to the joint departments of History, Philosophy,Italian Studies, and Comparative Religion. • While a Visiting Scholar at theUniversity of Washington also spoke about the Church and modern science to the Astrobiologyclass at Seattle University and gave an evening seminar on the same topic to agroup of undergraduate students from Seattle University and the University of Washington.Also gave an Astronomy Colloquium on “The Emergence of Life in the Universe”at the Herzberg Institute for Astrophysics, Victoria, BC, Canada, and conducted around table discussion on the Galileo affair. Gave a public lecture on the interaction ofscience and religion at the Centre for Religion in Society, University of Victoria.FUNES • As invited professor, taught a coarse in March on “Extragalactic Astronomy”to graduate students at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras in Tegucigalpa.Also gave a seminar on his extragalactic research and a lecture on “Astronomyand Faith” to the faculty of the graduate study program.HELLER • Participated 2 May in Paris at the panel discussion of “Quantum Physics andMathematics.” • In August gave a paper on “Are We Special in the Universe?” at theCastel Gandolfo Papal Seminar: Science-Religion-History, and another on “UltimateExplanation in Cosmology” at the International Wittgenstein Symposium in Austria.MAFFEO • At the meeting of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Italian NationalAcademy of Sciences) on 27 January to celebrate “One Hundred Years of Astronomy inItaly” presented a paper on the “Carte du Ciel Program and the Founding of the SpecolaVaticana.” • Gave lectures to the Master’s Program at the Pontifical University ReginaApostolorum on the relationship of science and faith.STOEGER • Helped prepare the academic program for the Vatican Observatory-Centerfor Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS) Capstone Conference on Scientific Perspectiveon Divine Action held in Castel Gandolfo, 7-13 September, and for the Universityof San Francisco-CTNS-Vatican Observatory conference on Reductionism andEmergence at USF, 7-12 October. • Gave a Templeton Foundation Lecture on32