In Search of Falling Stars with Jim Banks

Date: Thursday, November 12 2026

In 1923, a brilliant fireball inspired Harvey (H. H.) Nininger, a small-town biology professor, to leave everything behind to search for meteorites across America. Facing financial ruin, scientific skepticism, and countless dead ends, Nininger built one of the world’s greatest meteorite collections, helped explain Arizona’s Meteor Crater, and played a pioneering role in establishing meteoritics as a modern science. Jim Banks re-edited and republished the autobiography of Nininger, who was his grandfather and a Sedona resident. Banks will speak about his grandfather’s unique life, ranging from his upbringing in backwoods farming communities where education was actively discouraged to the adventures, discovery, and challenges in his groundbreaking efforts to track down and study meteorites and ultimately to his eventual recognition as a pioneer and an acknowledged expert in an increasingly important field. He will also explain how Sedona became home to a one-of-a-kind meteorite museum in the 1950s. In Search of Falling Stars: HH Nininger’s Classic Find A Falling Star Revisited & Expanded will be available for sale at the event.

• Time: 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM

• Dates