Today’s interview was first heard in episode 19 back in 2019. The conversation is with Russ Rowlett, webmaster of The Lighthouse Directory, one of the most useful lighthouse-related sites on the internet. When Russ was growing up in Richmond, Virginia, his only exposure to lighthouses was climbing the Old Cape Henry Lighthouse when his family vacationed at Virginia Beach.
Russ earned a doctorate degree in math at the University of Virginia in the 1960s, and he taught math at Princeton and then the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. In 1987 he became Director of the Center for Mathematics and Science Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He’s also known for his research on the metric system and units of measurement.
Russ started his website, The Lighthouse Directory, in 1999, and it kept growing until, by 2009, it covered the whole world. The address of the site is ibiblio.org/lighthouse/ At this moment there are listings for more than 24,600 of the world’s lighthouses. If there are more lighthouses out there, Russ will find them.
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U.S. Lighthouse Society Historian Jeremy D’Entremont is the author of 24 books and hundreds of articles on lighthouses and maritime history. He is a past president of the American Lighthouse Foundation and founder of Friends of Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouses, and he has lectured and narrated cruises throughout the Northeast and in other regions. He is also the producer and host of the U.S. Lighthouse Society’s weekly podcast, “Light Hearted.” He can be emailed at Jeremy@uslhs.org