Celebrate the 450th birthdays of Shakespeare and Galileo. A two-day conference will honor the lives and works of these two remarkable men.

Thursday, November 13, 2014, Adam Gopnik from The New Yorker will give a talk at 5 p.m. at Ganz Hall, Roosevelt University (430 S. Michigan Ave., 7th Floor). Gopnik, a celebrated essayist, has written for the New Yorker since 1986, and his work for the magazine has won both the National Magazine Award for Essay and the George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting. Among his many books are Angels & Ages: A Short Book about Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life, and most recently, The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food. RSVPs for Gopnik’s lecture at Roosevelt University are recommended, but not required.

Friday, November 14, 2014, a series of events will take place all day at IIT’s McCormick Tribune Campus Center Auditorium. Friday’s schedule at IIT will include distinguished lectures by Victoria Kahn, Chair of the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley (9 a.m.); David Wootton, Professor of History at the University of York in England (10:30 a.m.); Mary Nichols, Professor of Political Science at Baylor University (1 p.m.); Ben Lynerd, Postdoctoral Fellow for the Montesquieu Forum at Roosevelt University (2:30 p.m.). Lunch will be provided, and a catered reception will follow. Full conference schedule is available here.

The Galileo-Shakespeare Project is presented by the Montesquieu Forum and the Benjamin Franklin Project, in partnership with the Jack Miller Center and the John Templeton Foundation.

For more information about the conference email Carolyn Purnell at cpurnel1@iit.edu. Please feel free to forward this invitation to any colleagues and students who might be interested.