Terrific interview...I learned something about the link between science and art. My only question: Where do you send a college student who wants to explore this link and is good at art and science? I wanted to hear his answer to this question! We need more cross-field educational opportunties like. The value is in the intersection between fields.

The guest was engaging and made the topic interesting.
I must read his book.

What a fabulous conversation! I am thrilled to have been present at this wonderful, informative exchange. Congratulations Mr. Lopate. One of your best!

Another fascinating interview. I just put a hold on the book at the NY Public Library website, as did four others at the same time.

What role did an openness to amateurs play?

I'm thinking John Harrison, who invented the timepiece that solved the problem of measuring longitude. He was opposed for years by the Royal Society (I think) until he directly enlisted the aid of King George III (who had established a prize to encourage a solution to the longitude problem).

I was thinking of Mary Anning.

What a time! Just some of the people who come to mind: Darwin, Wollstonecraft, Madame de Pompadour (a few decades earlier), Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze (wife of Lavoisier), William Buckland....

1. Was Mr. Holmes at the University of East Anglia for a while? Does he have any thoughts on the recent dust-up over stolen emails on climate change?

2. More interesting (I hope): It seems like there may be a mild resurgence of interest in the ties, links between science and art (poetry, etc.) in the past, particularly in the 18th Century and into the 19th.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley might be an example.

And I think that Mr. Lopate may recently have interviewed a writer who examines an early 19th Century natural scientist -- a woman now largely underappreciated -- who was a key figure in early, major fossil discoveries, especially on the southern coast of Britian.