CANTON - Derrick Pitts, chief astronomer and director of the Fels Planetarium at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, will speak on "Science, Galileo and the Rise of Science Denialism," at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 28, in Herring-Cole. The university's Niles Memorial Lecture on Science and Religion is open to the public, free of charge.

Pitts states, "During the Renaissance, Galileo engaged in a titanic struggle to meld science and religion in new way. Although that effort failed, he succeeded in pushing the practice of science to a new level of empirical investigation where testability and proof are 'king.' Why then do we allow school districts to reject proven scientific tenets, principles and laws? What do we expect to be the effect of this denialism of science to be on our society overall? Can science and religion co-exist today?"

Host of the WHYY-FM public radio programs "SkyTour" and "SkyTalk," Pitts has appeared often in the national media, from "The Colbert Report" on Comedy Central to "Good Morning America."

In 2009, he played host to one of the most important scientific instruments in existence, a telescope that was used by Galileo, which was on loan to the Franklin Institute. The featured piece in an exhibition called "Galileo, the Medici and the Age of Astronomy," the telescope was there in celebration of the International Year of Astronomy. It was the first time ever that the 400-year-old instrument had been allowed out of Italy.

Pitts was one of only three non-NASA guests invited to the White House "star party" on the South Lawn in 2010. Pitts set up the telescope near President Barack Obama's podium; both the President and Michelle Obama used the telescope to see a rare "double-double" star on the occasion. Some 150 school children in the Washington area were also guests at the party, which featured a number of telescopes set up for observation of the night sky.

Pitts, who graduated from St. Lawrence in 1978, is a university trustee.