Yale’s Meg Urry has spent her career investigating the mysteries of the universe, and her summer reading includes a book that profiles some of the women who shaped the field of astronomy — and offers historical context for August’s total solar eclipse.
Urry is the Israel Munson Professor of Physics in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and director of the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics. Her scientific research focuses on active galaxies, which host accreting supermassive black holes in their centers; she is also the founding physics instructor for the Global Teaching Project, which provides advanced courses to promising high school students in underserved areas.
Meg Urry
Do you have a favorite book that you wish more people had read?
Meg Urry: A book I just finished, and that I wish everyone would read, is “Careless People,” by Sarah Wynn-Williams. It’s an insider’s view of Facebook/Meta. Not a beach read, that’s for sure — it’s a damning portrait of the tension between the initial idealism of tech companies and their surrender to making a buck at all costs. The story arc is that the author starts out as a complete idealist hoping to help Facebook do great things in the world, but commercial interests thoroughly squash any lofty principles.
For lighter but engaging fare, I recently read a couple of books by Lily King (“Writers & Lovers,” “The Pleasing Hour”), after having greatly enjoyed her 2014 novel “Euphoria.” She is great at creating three-dimensional characters and stories that are intriguing and thoroughly believable.
What’s the last great book you read?
Urry: I’m a huge fan of Helen DeWitt’s “The English Understand Wool.” Hard to describe, couldn’t put it down.
Is there anything you’re reading for your area of expertise?
Urry: Along the astronomy direction, I recommend Dava Sobel’s “The Glass Universe,” about the women who contributed so much to astronomy. It’s timely, too, because it includes detailed descriptions of solar eclipse expeditions from 1915 to 1919, which aimed to confirm predictions from Einstein’s theory of general relativity. (There is a total solar eclipse coming up on August 12, visible from Iceland to Spain and the Mediterranean.)
