Heather Ewing, the author of The Lost World of James Smithson: Science, Revolution, and the Birth of the Smithsonian, was the featured USC Libraries Literary Luncheon speaker on March 12. In this clip, recorded in the Hancock Memorial Museum at USC, she describes Smithson's meteoric rise in London scientific circles and voyage of discovery to the Hebrides islands west of Scotland.
Smithson was one of the youngest members of the Royal Society and a prominent figure in the thriving scientific culture of Enlightenment Europe.
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