Catching Up with a Great Science Writer and Bicyclist I Haven't Seen For More Than 15 Years.

 

Katharine Sanderson and I on the 

north side of the Millennium Bridge

In 2004 Katharine Sanderson flew from the offices of "Chemistry World" magazine in Cambridge, UK, to Philadelphia to write about a collection of historic science books. The museum and library I worked for the time, Science History Institute, had just acquired a collection of 6,000 science books dating back almost to the invention of printing.  The article is here.

In February of the following year, I saw Katharine again and the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).  At the meeting, which was in St. Louis that year, Katharine introduced me to Marc Abrahams, the creator and impresario of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony held the second Thursday of September in Sanders Theater on the campus of Harvard University--in the other Cambridge. I eventually became a volunteer at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony.

Marc Abrahams at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, assisted by a human flashlight

In 2005 Katharine was back to Science History Institute to write about the 40th Anniversary Moore's Law.  Gordon Moore is a co-founder of Intel Corporation and known the law of increasing complexity of microprocessor chips that bears his name. But he considers himself a chemist and held the ceremony to celebrate Moore's Law at the Science History Institute, not in Silicon Valley.

Katharine and I met at another meeting a couple of years later. During that visit we ran to Camden, New Jersey, and back across the Ben Franklin Bridge.  We have kept in touch. I followed her writing at "Chemistry World" and later at "Nature" magazine.

A decade ago she started a family and became a more avid bicyclist.  She also moved to one of the top places for the cycling in the world: the Pyrenees mountains in southwestern France. 

Now she lives in Cornwall on the southwest coast of England. A good place for riding, but not the Pyrenees! We finally got together for a long walk and coffee after more than a decade and a half.  We also walked along the Thames with Katharine's friend Elaine who lives in the Pyrenees. Her husband Peter Cossins wrote "A Cyclist's Guide to the Pyrenees." Now we have a tentative plan that if I make one last ride of the Tour de France climbs, I will ride the Pyrenees instead of the Alps and Katharine will visit and ride the big climbs.

Since she is about half my age, I will watch her disappear into the clouds.