This Friday night will see a historic event. Charles Seim, author of the 1956 classic engineering report “Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown,” will give a five-minute public lecture about it. This will be the first time, ever, that he has done so.
Seim’s strapless evening gown work somehow led to a subsequent career as one of the world’s great bridge engineers. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Seim will be a featured speaker at the annual Improbable Research session at this years Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
It happens at 8:00 pm, Friday, February 16, at the Hilton San Francisco (333 O’Farrell St.), in Imperial Ballroom A. This session is free and open to the general public — but the number of seats is limited.
Other speakers include: Ig Nobel Prize winners Ivan Schwab (“Why Woodpeckers Don’t Get Headaches”) and Phil Zimbardo (“Politicians? Uniquely Simple Personalities”); Yoram Bauman (“Mankiw’s Ten Principles of Economics, Translated”); Leslie Lamport and Ellen Gilkerson (“On Hair Color in France”); Jeff Van Bueren (“Postal Experiments”); Scott Sandford (topic TBA) and Doug Zongker (“Chicken Chicken Chicken”).
Engineering note: If you are coming to the session, and you own a strapless evening gown and know how to wear it, please do.
BONUS (after the fact): Here is video of Doug Zonker’s lecture from that night: