Brother Guy Consolmagno, S.J. to Speak at Gonzaga’s 2019 Commencement Exercises

Gonzaga is excited to announce that Brother Guy Consolmagno, S.J., Director of the Vatican Observatory, will give the 49th Kohlmann Address at the 2019 graduation ceremony on June 2. A brilliant scientist and author of several books, he writes and speaks often about the intersection of science and religion. Click here to read an interview with him in Science Magazine. He was also the subject of a recent Wall Street Journal article called "The Vatican's Astronomer on God and the Stars" (if you are a subscriber, you can read it here).

Below is Dr. Consolmagno’s full bio.

Brother Guy Consolmagno, S.J. is the Director of the Vatican Observatory and President of the Vatican Observatory Foundation. A native of Detroit, Michigan, he earned undergraduate and masters' degrees from MIT, and a Ph. D. in Planetary Science from the University of Arizona; he was a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard and MIT, served in the US Peace Corps (Kenya), and taught university physics at Lafayette College before entering the Jesuits in 1989.

At the Vatican Observatory since 1993, his research explores connections between meteorites, asteroids, and the evolution of small solar system bodies, observing Kuiper Belt objects with the Vatican's 1.8 meter telescope in Arizona, and applying his measure of meteorite physical properties to understanding asteroid origins and structure. Along with more than 200 scientific publications, he is the author of a number of popular books including Turn Left at Orion (with Dan Davis), and Would You Baptize an Extraterrestial? (with Paul Mueller). He also has hosted science programs for BBC Radio 4, been interviewed in numerous documentary films, appeared on The Colbert Report, and for more than a dozen years he has written a monthly science column for the British Catholic magazine, The Tablet.

Dr. Consolmagno's work has taken him to every continent on Earth; in 1996 he spent six weeks collecting meteorites with a NASA team on the blue ice regions of East Antarctica. He has served on the governing boards of the Meteoritical Society; the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences (of which he was chair in 2006-2007); and the International Astronomical Union (IAU). He currently serves as the chair of the Mars Task Group on the IAU’s Working Group on Planetary System Nomenclature. In 2000, the small bodies nomenclature committee of the IAU named an asteroid, 4597 Consolmagno, in recognition of his work. In 2014 he received the Carl Sagan Medal from the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences for excellence in public communication in planetary sciences.

Also, here is a great video featuring Brother Consolmagno about the really interesting work that the Vatican Observatory does. We look forward to welcoming him to Eye Street in June!