UUFSM to give Joseph Priestley Awards at Science Fair - Help Needed
Submitted by UUFSM on 9 December 2009 - 10:05pm
The Fellowship will be presenting two "Joseph Priestley Awards" for excellence in chemistry at the local Science Fair on Saturday, 20 February 2010: one for a high-school student and one for a middle-school student. The money for the awards came from our monthly collections during July, August, and September. UUFSM is also sponsoring a display table with information about Joseph Priestley in the afternoon. If you would like to help in making the display or in staffing our table, please speak to Bill Triplett.
Joseph Priestley was born in England in 1733. He was a Unitarian minister and a noted teacher, and wrote articles on a wide variety of subjects. He stressed the importance of education and of independent inquiry. “Through [science]," he wrote, "the security and happiness of mankind are daily improved.” A friend of Benjamin Franklin, Priestley moved to the United States of America in 1794. His sermons in Philadelphia did much to spread Unitarianism before he settled in Northumberland, PA, where he died ten years later. (See http://www.josephpriestleyhouse.org/ for more information.) The UU Joseph Priestley District encompasses southern Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and northern Virginia.
