Lectures on Tap - The Woman Who Solved the Sun

Join us for an engaging evening where professors, experts, and storytellers bring their thought-provoking lectures to your favorite bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn!

Hosted by the Lectures on Tap team.

🗓️ Date: October 14th, 2025

🕡 Time: 6:30 PM

📍 Location: Williamsburg, Brooklyn (exact address given in confirmation email)

📚 Lecture: "The Woman Who Solved the Sun"

🎤 Speaker: Astronomer, Dr. Mark Popinchalk,

This year marks the centennial anniversary of a groundbreaking discovery: the first time a human fully understood the composition of the sun. This extraordinary achievement was made by Cecilia Payne, the first female graduate student in astronomy at Harvard.

In this captivating lecture, Dr. Mark Popinchalk will share the dramatic story of Payne's pioneering work, where she utilized quantum mechanics and countless hours of observational data to prove her thesis. Despite facing the challenges of navigating a male-dominated academic world, Payne's groundbreaking insights transformed our understanding of stellar composition.

Dr. Mark Popinchalk is a postdoctoral researcher at the American Museum of Natural History in the BDNYC group and an adjunct professor at NYU. He studies star ages based on their rotation rates and enjoys presenting at the planetarium. Additionally, he is an ultimate frisbee player and an avid bread maker.

Get a drink, connect, and learn at Lectures on Tap! 🙌

Agenda

6:30 PM – Doors open: find a seat (open seating!), order food & drinks, and expect a bar line—arriving early is key.

6:55 PM – Host introduction

7:00 PM – Lecture begins

7:45 PM – Audience Q&A

8:00 PM – Have 1:1 time with the speaker, mingle with fellow guests, and order another round

8:30 PM – Wrap up.

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