Environmental Film Festival Starts Jan. 24

The 2013 Princeton Environmental Film Festival will begin January 24 and run for three weekends at the Princeton Public Library. Check out the schedule here.

As part of the festival, I will be giving a presentation on the legacy of Oswald and Elizabeth Veblen on Sunday, February 10 at 11am. Oswald Veblen was a mathematician, nature lover and visionary who was instrumental in bringing the Institute for Advanced Study, Albert Einstein and many other famed scholars to Princeton. He also played key roles in early computer development and ballistics research during the world wars.

Counter to the stereotype of a cloistered academic, Veblen's love of land motivated his successful efforts to save from development hundreds of acres of open space in Princeton. He convinced the funders of the Institute to acquire much of what is now the Institute Woods, and he and his wife donated 82 acres to the county to form Herrontown Woods in 1957, laying the foundation for open space efforts in the decades that have followed.

He and Elizabeth Veblen left behind a house with "wonderful and unique" architectural features, on the edge of Herrontown Woods, that they willed to Mercer County to be used as a nature museum and library. Though the county did not follow through, and the house has been boarded up for more than a decade, the house and farmstead still attract dreamers such as myself, wishing to put it to public use.

More info at VeblenHouse.org.