DSLS 1990-1991

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  On Quantifying Chirality

  Kurt Mislow

  (Abstract taken from the 1990-91 DSLS Program).

  Kurt Mislow is Hugh Stan Taylor Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus. at Princeton University.

  Professor Mislow was born in Berlin, earned his B.S. from Tulane University (1944), and obtained his Ph.D. under the direction of Linus Pauling at the California Institute of Technology (1947). He then joined the faculty of New York University where he remained for seventeen years, rising to the rank of full professor. In 1967 he was appointed to the Hugh Stott Taylor Professorship in Chemistry at Princeton end served as chairman of the department (1968—1974). Since 1988 he has been Hugh Stott Taylor Professor of Chemistry Emeritus, at Princeton, where he is continuing his research activities.

  Dr. Mislow has been a Sloan Fellow (1959—63) and has held two Guggenheim Fellowships: one in 1956 at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zürich, where he worked with V. Prelog, and another in 1974 at the University of Cambridge, where he was also an Overseas Fellow of Churchill College.

  Professor Mislow has been awarded honorary degrees by the Free University of Brussels, Tulane, and the University of Uppsala. He has delivered numerous named lectures in the United States and abroad. Among his more recent awards are the Prelog Medal (1986) and the William H. Nichols Medal (1987). He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1972 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1974. He has served on the editorial advisory boards of seven journals, including the Journal of Organic Chemistry and Accounts of Chemical Research. His book, Introduction to Stereochiemistry (1965), was the first text to develop the major principles of stereochemistry based on symmetry and group theory, and has been translated into German and Japanese.

  His work: The dominant theme in Mislow's research has been the development of stereochemical theory. Professor Mislow's early work culminated in the first general method for establishing the absolute configurations of Optically active biphenyls. He went on to study the stereochemistry of atropisomers and of sulfur and phosphorus compounds. His more recent work has focused on the novel stereoisomerism that is the result of correlated rotation in molecular propellers and cogwheels.

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  Quinine, a forty Year Construction Problem

  Gilbert Stork

  (Abstract taken from the 1990-91 DSLS Program.)

  Gilbert Stork is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Chemistry at Columbia University.

  Professor Stork was born in Brussels, Belgium, and was educated in France before receiving a B S. from the University of Florid a in 1942. He earned a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin in 1965, then joined the faculty at Harvard University, first as an instructor (1946) and then as assistant professor (1948). Moving to Columbia University as an associate professor (1953), he was appointed full professor in 1955 and Eugene Higgins Professor of Chemistry in 1967. He served as departmental chairman from 1970 to 1973. Professor Stork also chaired the Organic Division of the American Chemistry Society in 1966—67.

  Dr. Stork has received honorary degrees from Lawrence University, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, the University of Rochester and Emory University. He has received numerous prizes and awards, including the William H. NichoIs Medal (1980), the Arthur C. Cope Award (1980), the Edgar Fahs Smith Award (1982), the Willard Gibbs Medal (1982), the National Academy of Sciences Award in Chemical Sciences (1982), the NationaI Medal of Science (1983), the Pauling Award (1983), the Tetrahedron Prize(1985), the Remsen Awąrd (1986), the Cliff S. Hamilton Award (1986), and the Monie A. Ferst Award and Medal (1987). Dr. Stork has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (1961), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1962), and as a foreign member of the French Academie des Sciences (1989).

  His work: Professor Stork is noted for his designs for the synthesis of natural products of some complexity. Throughout his research, he has been concerned less with the natural product itself than with new and interesting methods for solving regiochemical and stereochemical problems. For example, he demonstrated the usefulness of enamines in the alkylation and acylation of aIdehydes and ketones, a technique that has proven useful in organic synthesis in a variety of ways.

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  Understanding Life in the Laboratory

  Sidney Altman

  (Abstract taken from the 1990-1991 Distinguished Scientist Lecture Program).

  Dr. Sidney Altman is Sterling Professor of Biology at Yale University and one of the 1989 Nobel Laureates in Chemistry.

  Professor Altman was born in Montreal, Quebec, and received a B.S. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1960. He was a graduate student at Columbia University in 1960—61, and then at the University of Colorado at Boulder where he earned a Ph.D. in biophysics in 1967, working under the supervision of Leonard S. Lerman. Dr. Altman was

  a research assistant in molecular biology at Vanderbilt University for a brief period before his appointment as a postdoctoral research feTlow at Harvard University from 1967 to 1969, where Ile received a Damon Runyon Memorial Fund Cancer Research Fellowship in molecular biology to work in the laboratory of Matthew S. Meselson. While in Cambridge, he also served as tutor of biology at Radcliffe College. Dr Altman then received an Anna Ful!er Fund for Cancer Research Fellowship to work as a visiting research fellow in the laboratory of Sydney Brenner and Francis Crick at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, from 1969 to 1971. Dr. Altman then received an assistant professorship in biology at Yale University, where he was promoted to associate professor in 1975 and became a full professor in 1980. He served as Chairman of Biology (1983—1985l, and was the ninth Dean of Yale College lJ985—19891. While Dean of the College, Dr. Altman worked to broaden the role of science in the liberal arts curriculum.

  In addition to the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Professor Altman hąs received numer0us awards including the Rosenstiel Awąrd for Basic Biomedical Research in 1989, the Yale Science and Engineering Award in 1990, and the Distinguished Service Medal from the Teachers College of Columbia University in 1990. Dr. Altman was also elected to the National Academy of Sciences. in 1990.

  (Abstract taken from the 1990-1991 DSLS Program.)

  His work: Work by Sidney Altman in the late 1970s revealed the existence of complex molecules known as ribozymes, consisting of both RNA and protein, and demonstrated that the RNA portion acted as the enzyme or catalyst. The findings that RNA could act as an enzyme went against current scientific dogma and brought new perspectives on theories of the origin of life. For this work, he shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Thomas Cech of the University of Colorado at Boulder

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  Antibody Gene Formation

  David Baltimore

  (Abstract taken from the 1990-91 DSLS Program.)

  David Baltimore, a 1975 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine. has recently been appointed the President of Rockefeller University. He was most recently the Director of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  Born in New York City, Dr. Baltimore received his bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore in 1960 and then returned to New York City to earn a Ph.D. al the Rockefeller Institute in 1964. In 1965, after research fellowships at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in l963-64 and the AIbert Einstein CoIIege of Medicine (1964 - I965), Dr. Baltimore moved to California to become a Research Associate at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, where he worked with Renąto Dulbecco, one of the foremost researchers in animal virology. In 1968 Dr. Baltimore returned to MIT, which had offered him an associate professorship. He was appointed Professor of Biology in 1972 and American Cancer Society Professor of Microbiology in 1973. In 1982 he assumed the directorship of the new Whitehead łnstitute for Biomedical Research, the position he is relinquishing to become President of Rockefeller University.

  For his workDavid Baltimore has received numerous prizes and awards, including the Gustave Stern Award in Virology (1970), the Warren Triennial Prize (l97l), the Eli Lilly Award in Microbiology and Immunology (l971) the U S. Steel Award in Molecular BioIogy (1974), the Gairdner Foundation Annual Award (1974), and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1975). He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (1974), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1974), the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (1978I, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences as a Fellow 11989), the Royal Society as a Foreign Member (1987), and the Institute of Medicine (1988).

  His work: David Baltimore shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Renate Dulbecco and Howard Temin for his discovery of reverse transcriptase, the RNA-dependent DNA polymerase of animal tumor viruses. This is the enzyme that ’violates the "central dogma" that" DNA makes RNA makes protein." Interesting in its own right, reverse transcriptase has become a key tool of biotechnology. Dr. Baltimore's more recent research interests have included the molecular genetic s of AIDS, cancer, and the immune response.

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  Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series Program 1990-1991

  Bard College

  Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series Brochure 1990-1991, published by the Bard Center

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  Biotechnology and Plant Agriculture

  Winston J. Brill

  (Abstract taken from the 1990-91 DSLS Program).

  Formerly Vilas Research Professor of Bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and founder and Vice President of Research and Development of the Agracetus Corporation of Middleton, Wisconsin, Dr. Brill has recently formed a new company. Winston J. Brill & Associates, to assist corporations in improving research productivity and creativity.

  Dr. Brill was born in London, received his B.A. from Rutgers University in 1981, and earned his Ph.D. in microbiology at the University of Illinois, Urbana, in 1965. After obtaining his doctorate, he was involved in research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1965 to 1967 as a National Institute of Health Postdoctoral Fellow. Dr. Brill was then appointed assistant professor of bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he served as associate professor full professor and Vilas Research Professor. He is currently an adjunct professor in the Department of Bacteriology.

  In 1981 Dr. Brill founded the Agracetus Corporation, and served as its vice president and director of research until 1989. He has also served on the National Institute of Health Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee I1973—1983), the Genetic Engineering Advisory Panel to the U.S. Secretary of State (19811, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture P0licy Advising Committee (1985—present).

  Dr. Brill has received numerous honors, including the Eli Lilly Award in Microbiology and Immunology and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Award, both in 1979. He was elected t0 the National Academy of Sciences

  His work: Dr. Brill is a leader in the area of agricultural applications of biotechnology with approximately 160 publications, one patent, and two patents pending in the field. He has served on numerous committees aimed at evaluating the safety and effectiveness of genetic engineering in plants. His own research focuses on the use of genetic engineering to understand and to manipulate the process of nitrogen fixation in plants.

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  Towards the Reunification of Modern Mathematics and Physics

  Arthur M. Jaffe

  (Abstract taken from the 1990-1991 DSLS Program.)

  Arthur M. Jaffe is the Landon T. Clay Professor of Mathematics and Theoretical Science at Harvard University. He is also chief editor of Communications in Mathematical Physics, editor or Progress in Physics and Selecta Mathematica, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

  Dr. Jaffe earned his B.A. at Princeton University and e second bachelor‘s degree from Cambridge University. and returned to Princeton to earn a Ph.D. in physics. He taught at Stanford University, was a member at the particle physics group at S.L.A.C., end wee e research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, before joining the faculty at Harvard. where he has been for over twenty years. Dr. Jaffe tool time off mom Harvard to be a visiting professor at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule in Zurich, at Princeton University and at Rockefeller University. and ha has delivered invited Iectur8g at many institutiions including Rice University, Yale University and the Mathematical Association of America.

  Dr. Jaffe is widely known for his work in mathematical physics. He earned Guggenheim and Sloan Fellowships and received an honorary degree from Harvard. He was given the New York Academy of Science Award in Mathametics and Physics and the Dannie Heinemann Prize by the American Physical Society.

  His work: Dr. Jaffe has written extensively in subjects such as vortices and monopoles. quantum field theory and statistical mechanics, constructive quantum field theory, and gauge field theories. His innovations in the methods and domain of field theory here enabled him to create mathematical models for a wide variety of phenomena, from quarks and monopoles in particle physics to critical exponents in condensed matter physics.