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Profiles: Jill Tarter and the Search for E.T.
March 3, 2021 @ 11:00 am - 12:30 pm
FreeThis ongoing series explores the people, places, and events that shape our lives, our world, our universe.
Presented by Dr. Bill Thierfelder, professor emeritus and docent at the American Museum of Natural History.
JILL TARTER AND THE SEARCH FOR E.T.: Jill Tarter has spent more than 40 years working on a Holy Grail search for life beyond planet Earth. Tarter, an astronomer and co-founder of the SETI Institute in California, is also the inspiration for Ellie Arroway, the alien-hunting protagonist of Carl Sagan’s 1985 classic novel Contact and the award-winning 1997 Jodie Foster film adaptation.
While Sagan and his friends were popularizing the mysteries of the universe in books and television, Tarter was working behind the scenes, spending countless hours managing underfunded telescopes, fundraising for projects, publishing paper after paper, and trying to convince skeptics that the search for extraterrestrial life, this strange new field, was worth it.
This Women’s History Month program celebrates the many achievements of this remarkable scientist.