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The Far Out Journal Club invites you to join us for an online conversation with Dennis Kois, Executive Director of Yerkes Observatory
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From the outer limits of the Milky Way, the Alachua Astronomy Club has started the Far Out Journal Club. Produced by Rich Russin and hosted by past president Terry Smiljanich, the goal is to have a personal, in-depth visit with the authors, artists, musicians, curators, and other cultural icons who bring us the vast world of cultural science and science fiction.
Have you wondered what it would be like to run an observatory? In this episode we welcome Dennis Kois, Executive Director of Yerkes Observatory. Learn about the future of Yerkes Observatory and what is involved in managing it.
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Dennis Kois
Executive Director
Yerkes Observatory / Yerkes Future Foundation
Biography:
Dennis Kois is the Executive Director of Wisconsin’s Yerkes Observatory.
When the University of Chicago closed the observatory and transferred ownership to the newly-created Yerkes Future Foundation in 2020, Dennis became the first—and for a year, only—employee.
In the years since Dennis and the non-profit Foundation have raised more than $30 million to begin reimagining and restoring the 1897 observatory and fifty-acre Olmsted-designed landscape. That project is expected to take more than a decade, and some $87 million, to complete.
The observatory, still undergoing restoration, opened to the public in 2022 with a new mission and vision for the institution’s role in the future of astronomy. It has already attracted more than 100,000 visitors for programs, events and tours that bring together science, art and landscape in unexpected and thought-provoking ways.
Also in 2022 the observatory recruited Dr. Amanda Bauer from the Vera Rubin Observatory to become Deputy Director and Head of Science; the first woman to lead astronomy in Yerkes’ 128-year history. Today Yerkes has a full-time staff of 17.
While restoration work continues Yerkes has begun hosting summer research programs for graduate and undergraduate astronomers, commissioning artworks, mounting exhibitions, and welcoming artists, Nobel laureates, MacArthur “genius grant” winners, Grammy-winning composers, renowned architects and NASA astronauts for residencies and public programs
Yerkes Observatory:
Yerkes Observatory with Geneva Lake in the background.
Albert Einstein with the Yerkes staff during his first visit to America in May, 1921. Visiting to lecture and defend his theory of relativity at Princeton, Einstein asked hist hosts to see two things during his trip--Niagara Falls, and the Observatory.
Astronomers Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Gerard Kuiper and Otto Struve outside Yerkes, ca.1940.
Join Zoom Meeting:
Http://bit.ly/FarOutJournalClub
https://sfcollege.zoom.us/j/91733146162?pwd=Ib7KD0Sd1UKU8cbeUR0u7bxbOzmSOj.1
