Accidental Twins Productions

Dr. Farouk El-Baz

In 1995 Magaly Koch, a Cambridge resident and member of Cambridge Community Television, was one the scientists who participated in a project by Boston University’s Center for Remote Sensing that involved estimating the crowd size of the Million Man March in Washington, D.C.

At the time, there was a huge controversy surrounding the actual number of people who had attended the event organized by the Nation of Islam. The National Park Service claimed the number to be well below one million whereas the organizers estimated a figure above one million people.  Dr. Farouk El-Baz, who is the director of the Center for Remote Sensing, was approached back then to provide a scientifically more accurate number that would  help settle the dispute. Ever since, he has become the nation’s leading expert in counting crowds.

So with the historic event of President Barack Obama’s inauguration approaching, Dr. El-Baz has been bombarded with telephone calls from the news media. Everybody wants to know how many people can fill the Washington Mall. Check out this conversation between Farouk and Magaly reminiscing about the Million Man March crowd counting project and discussing the number of people who can be expected to fill the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on January 20th, 2009.

Click here to watch the video.