Would you baptize an extraterrestrial?
Brother Guy Consolmagno, Director of the Vatican Observatory and President of the Vatican Observatory Foundation Area of Research: Asteroids and Meteorites, reflects on this question and more. Join the conversation with Brother Guy at Calvert House on Nov. 13. at 3:30pm.
Please RSVP by emailing [email protected].
Br. Guy Consolmagno SJ was born in 1952 in Detroit, Michigan. He obtained his Bachelor of Science in 1974 and Master of Science in 1975 in Earth and Planetary Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his Ph.D. in Planetary Science from the University of Arizona in 1978. From 1978-80 he was a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at the Harvard College Observatory, and from 1980-1983 continued as postdoc and lecturer at MIT. In 1983 he left MIT to join the US Peace Corps, where he served for two years in Kenya teaching physics and astronomy. Upon his return to the US in 1985 he became an assistant professor of physics at Lafayette College, in Easton, Pennsylvania, where he taught until his entry into the Jesuit order in 1989. He took vows as a Jesuit brother in 1991, and studied philosophy and theology at Loyola University Chicago, and physics at the University of Chicago before his assignment to the Vatican Observatory in 1993. In spring 2000 he held the MacLean Chair for Visiting Jesuit Scholars at St. Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, in 2006-2007 the Loyola Chair at Fordham University, New York, and in fall 2009 the Lanigan Chair in Science, Medicine, and Ethics at LeMoyne College, Syracuse. He has also been a visiting scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center and a visiting professor at Loyola College, Baltimore, and Loyola University, Chicago.
He has coauthored two astronomy books: Turn Left at Orion (with Dan M. Davis; Cambridge University Press, 1989) and Worlds Apart (with Martha W. Schaefer; Prentice Hall, 1993). He is the author or co-author of four books exploring faith and science issues, including The Way to the Dwelling of Light (U of Notre Dame Press, 1998); Brother Astronomer (McGraw Hill, 2000); God’s Mechanics (Jossey-Bass, 2007), and Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial? (With Paul Mueller, Image, 2014). He also edited The Heavens Proclaim (Vatican Observatory Publications, 2009). Since 2004 he has written a monthly column on astronomy for the British Catholic periodical, The Tablet.
Br. Consolmagno’s research explores the connections between meteorites and asteroids, and the origin and evolution of small bodies in the solar system. In 1996, he spent six weeks collecting meteorites with an NSF-sponsored team on the blue ice of Antarctica, and in 2000 he was honored by the IAU for his contributions to the study of meteorites and asteroids with the naming of asteroid 4597 Consolmagno.
- Guy Consolmagno, SJ and Paul Mueller, SJ. Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial? … and Other Questions from the Astronomers’ In-box at the Vatican Observatory. (Image, 2014).
- The Heavens Proclaim: Astronomy and the Vatican. Edited by Guy Consolmagno. (Our Sunday Visitor, 2009).
- Guy Consolmagno. God’s Mechanics: How Scientists and Engineers Make Sense of Religion. (Jossey-Bass, 2007).
- Guy Consolmagno. Brother Astronomer: Adventures of a Vatican Scientist. (McGraw-Hill, 2000).
- Guy J. Consolmagno. The Way to the Dwelling of Light. (U. of Notre Dame Press, 1998).
- Guy Consolmagno and Martha Schaefer. Worlds Apart: A Textbook in Planetary Sciences. (Addison-Wesley, 1994).
- Guy Consolmagno and Dan M. Davis. Turn Left at Orion: Hundreds of Night Sky Objects to See in a Home Telescope – and How to Find Them. (Cambridge University Press, 1989; fourth edition, 2011).
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