DSLS 1992-1993

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  Mathematics and Computers: Recent Successes and Insurmountable Challenges

  Ronald L. Graham

  (Abstract taken from 1992-93 DSLS Program.)

  Ronald L. Graham is Adjunct Director, Research, Information Sciences Division, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey; University Professor of Mathematical Sciences, Rutgers University; and President-Elect of the American Mathematical Society. Before going off to college Ron Graham was a Ford Foundation Scholar at the University of Chicago. He received his B.S. in Physics from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, then went on to the University of California at Berkeley, where as a National Science Foundation and Woodrow Wilson Fellow he was awarded an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Mathematics. He went immediately to the Bell Labs in Murray Hill, ew Jersey, where he remains today. Since joining the Bell Labs, Dr. Graham has off and on been a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Princeton and Stanford Universities, a Fairchild Distinguished Scholar at the California Institute of Technology, a Distinguished Visiting Letters and Sciences Professor at the University of California, Davis, and a Regents Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Since 1986 he has been University Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Rutgers University. Dr. Graham is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the New York Academy of Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1972 he received the Polya Prize in Combinatorics, in 1981 he was chosen Scientist of the Year by World Book Encyclopedia, and more recently the Mathematics Association of America has presented him with the Carl Allendorfer Award (1990) and the Lester Ford Award (1991). At the time of his talk he will be President of the American Mathematical Society. His work: Dr. Graham has made important contributions to the fields of combinatorics, number theory, and theoretical computer science. He has an active interest in mathematics education and serves on the Square One Television Series Advisory Committee of the Children's Television Workshop. He currently serves on the editorial boards of more than thirty mathematics journals.

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  Genes and Differentiation: How Does an Organism Develop From an Egg?

  Harold M. Weintraub

  (Abstract taken from the 1992-93 DSLS Program.)

  Harold M. Weintraub is Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Member, Division of Basic Sciences, at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington. Born in Newark, New Jersey, Hal Weintraub received his B.A. cum laude from Harvard University in 1967. Accepted to the Medical Scholar Training Program at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, he received his Ph.D. under the supervision of Howard Holtzer in 1971 and his M.D. in 1973. On a Helen Hay Whitney Fellowship Dr. Weintraub traveled to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the Medical Research Council, Cambridge, England, were he worked with Sydney Brenner and Francis Crick (1972-73). An Assistant Professor, then Associate Professor, at Princeton University, Dr. Weintraub moved to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, where he is now a member of the Division of Basic Sciences and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is an Assistant Editor of both Science and Cell, and has been an Associate Editor of the Journal of Cell Biology. Dr. Weintraub was elected to the AOA National Medical Honor Society, received the Lilley Award in 1982, has been elected to both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has received the National Academy's prestigious Lounsberry Award (1991). His work: In over 110 scientific publications Dr. Weintraub has extensively explored chromosome structure and its importance for the regulation of gene activity. Along the way he discovered MyoD, a master regulatory gene for myogenesis, and was responsible for the conception and development of anti-sense RNA and DNA as inhibitors of gene activity. He has described this important technology in the January 1990 issue of Scientific American.

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  Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series Program 1992-1993

  Bard

  Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series Brochure 1992-1993, published by the Bard Center

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  Antibody and T-cell Receptor Specificity and Structure--What Is New in Hyperoariable Regions

  Elvin A. Kabat

  (Abstract text from the accompanying Program for 1992-93 DSLS series).

  Elvin A. Kabat is Higgins Professor Emerirus of Microbiology, Columbia University. Born of parents who emigrated to the United States from Russia and Lithuania, Elvin Kabat entered the College of the City of New York at the age of fifteen, graduating at the age of eighteen with a B.S. in chemistry. He then became the first graduate student of Michael Heidelberger at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, receiving an M.A. in 1934 and a Ph.D. in 1937, at the age of twenty three. From 1937 to 1938 Dr. Kabat was a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow at the Institute of Physical Chemistry in Uppsala, Sweden, working in the laborarories of The Svedberg and Arne Tiselius. After three years as an instructor of pathology at the 4 Cornell Medical College, Dr. Kabat returned to Columbia, where he rose from Research Associate in Biochemistry to Assistant, then to Associate Professor of Bacteriology, then ro Professor of Microbiology, and finally to Higgins Professor of Microbiology. Dr. Kabat "retired" in 1985 as Higgins Professor of Microbiology Emeritus. He now spends four days a week at his lab at the College of Physicians and Surgeons and two days a week at the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health. Among Dr. Ka bat's many a wards are his election to both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Eli Lilly Award in Bacteriology and Immunology, the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, the Academy Medal of the ew York Academy of Medicine, and the National Medal of Science. His work: Dr. Kabat discovered that antibodies are proteins (gamma-globulins, as defined by electrophoresis), and he has devoted his career to the elucidation of their structure. He found that antibodies differed from one another in "hypervariable" regions, and he predicted correctly that these regions would be involved in binding to target antigens. He thus is one of the founders of the field of immunochemistry. Among his over 400 scientific publications are the well-known books Experimental Immunochemistry, Structural Concepts in Immunology and Immunochemistry, and Sequences of Proteins of Immunological Interest.

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  Symmetry Principles and Physical Laws

  Melvin Schwartz

  (Abstract text taken from DSLS 1992-93 Program.)

  Melvin Schwartz is Professor of Physics at Columbia University and Associate Director for High Energy and Nuclear Physics at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Born and educated in New York City, Mel Schwartz received his A.B. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University in 1953 and 1958, respectively, and was an associate professor there when he performed at Brookhaven National Laboratory the experiment that would be cited in his Nobel Prize. He left Columbia in 1966 to spend twenty-five years at Stanford University as Professor and then as Consulting Professor. While in California he became Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Digital Pathways, Inc., a computer software company involved with data communications, security, and network management. In 1991 he returned to the New York area as Professor of Physics at Columbia and Associate Director for High Energy and Nuclear Physics at Brookhaven. In addition to some forty scientific articles in the field of high energy physics, Professor Schwartz has written a highly regarded textbook, Principles of Electrodynamics, most recently published by Dover in 1985. In 1988 Professor Schwartz received the Nobel Prize in Physics. Among other honors, he has held fellowships supported by the National Science, Sloan, and Guggenheim Foundations. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1975. Columbia awarded him an honorary D.Sc. in 1991. His work: The current understanding of the basic structure of all matter involves two classes of particles. The heavier particles (hadrons) are made of quarks, which fall into three "generations." The lighter particles also fall into three generations, each of which consists of a relatively massive lepton (electron, muon, or tauon) and its associated and relatively much smaller neutrino. Dr. Schwartz's demonstration that the muontype neutrino was nor the same as the electron-associated neutrino of beta-decay was a critical step in the development of this understanding. He continues to oversee research in the physics of high energy particles, with particular emphasis on weak interactions. *The 1992-93 Abe Gelbart Lecturer (Abstract text taken from DSLS 1992-93 Program.)