Bard Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series (All)

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  The Chemistry of Defense, Courtship, and Sexual Selection in the Insect World

  Jerrold Meinwald

  This lecture was part of the Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series 1995-1996 and given on May 5, 1996.

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  The Earliest History of the Universe

  Michael S. Turner

  This lecture was part of the Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series 1995-1996 and given on April 13, 1996.

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  The New Science of Complex Fluids

  William M. Gelbart

  This lecture was part of the Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series 1994-1995 and given on April 29, 1995.

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  How Nerve Cells Communicate in the Brain

  James E. Rothman

  This lecture was part of the Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series 1995-1996 and given on October 21, 1995.

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  Huntington's Disease and the Human Genome Project: Through the Looking Glass

  Nancy S. Wexler

  This lecture was part of the Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series 1994-1995 and given on May 6, 1995.

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  The Innerspace/Outerspace Connection: History and Progress Report

  Leon M. Lederman

  Former faculty member at Columbia University and the University of Chicago, former director of Nevis Laboratory and Fermilab, Leon M. Lederman is Pritzker Professor of Science, Illinois Institute of Technology, and science advisor to the governor of Illinois. Born and bred in New York City, Lederman received his B.A. from City College in 1943, majoring in chemistry with a minor in physics, and (after a stint in the U.S. Army) his Ph.D. in physics from Columbia University in 1951. Lederman spent the next twenty-eight years at Columbia, directing Columbia's Nevis Labs from 1961 to 1978, and doing research there and elsewhere around the world. He became the second director of Fermilab (Chicago) in 1979. In 1989 he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, and is now at IIT.

  In 1983 he received the Wolf Prize, and in 1988 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Mel Schwartz (Distinguished Science Lecturer, September 26, 1992) and Jack Steinberger. His work: With over two hundred research papers to his credit, Dr. Lederman is perhaps best known for his discovery of the B-quark (Wolf Prize) and the muon neutrino (Nobel Prize). Increasingly he has dealt with the more administrative aspects of high energy physics in particular and science in general. He was initiator and founding member of the governmental High Energy Physics Advisory Panel. During his term a director of Fermilab, the TEVATRON (the first superconducting synchrotron) was constructed and the SSC (the superconducting supercollider) was proposed. He has recently served as chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was founding trustee of a· residential public school for gifted children, and co-chairman of the board of a teacher's academy. Finally, he has worked for investment in science and technology enterprises in Illinois.

  (Text taken from the Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series Program 1993-1994).

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  The Evolutionary Origin of Birds

  John H. Ostrum

  This lecture was part of the Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series 1994-1995 and given on September 24, 1994.

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  Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series Program 1993-1994

  Bard College

  Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series Brochure 1993-1994, published by the Bard Center

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  A Scientist Looks Back

  Heinz Fraenkel-Conrat

  Heinz Fraenkel-Conrat is professor emeritus in the Department of Molecular Biology, University of California at Berkeley. He received his M.D. from the University of Breslau in 1933 and his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh in 1936. Before joining the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley, Dr. Fraenkel-Conrat held research fellowships in the laboratories of Max Bergmann (Rockefeller Institute), K. Slotta (lnstituto Butantan, Sao Paulo, Brazil), and H. M. Evans (Institute for Experimental Biology, University of California at Berkeley). He had also served for eight years as senior chemist at the Western Regional Laboratory of the United States Department of Agriculture in Albany, California. Dr. Fraankel- Connrat rnoved to the Virus Laboratory (founded by Wendell M. STanley) of the Department of Virology, University of California at Berkeley, in 1952; the department was later renamed the Department of Molecular Biology. Among his hundreds of scientific publications are the books Design and Function at the Threshold of Life: The Viruses; The Chemistry and Biology of Viruses; Catalogue of Viruses (Volume 1 of Comprehensive Virology); Virology (with P. Kimball); and Catalog, Characterization, and Classification of Viruses, a volume in The Viruses series. He has served on numerous editorial boards, including those of Biochemistry, Virology, and Intervirology, and he is editor (with R. R. Wagner) of the multivolume series Comprehensive Virology and of the newer series, The Viruses.

  Dr. Fraenkel-Conrat is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has received the Albert Lasker Award and the Alexander von Humbolt Prize, and was the first California Scientist of the Year.

  His work: Best known for his famous mixed reconstitution of the tobacco mosaic virus (H. Fraenkel-Conrat & B. Singer, "Virus reconstitution IL Combination of protein and nucleic acid from different strains," Biochimica et Biophysica Acta 24: 540-548, 1957), which very elegantly demonstrated, once and for all, that nucleic acid, not protein, determined heredity, Dr. Fraenkel Conrat was also the first to demonstrate enzymatic peptide bond synthesis and the first to demonstrate the existence of RNA-directed RNA polymerases in plants.

  (Text taken from the Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series Program 1993-1994).

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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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  From Perspective to Fractals: Relations Between Geometry, Science, and Art

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  Benoit Mandelbrot is an IBM Fellow at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center, International Business Machines, Inc., and Abraham Robinson Professor of Mathematics at Yale University. He is a graduate of the Paris Ecole Polytechnique, the California Institute of Technology, and the University of Paris. He has held positions at CNRS in Paris, MIT, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Harvard, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and the • University of Paris-Sud. The father of fractal geometry, Professor Mandelbrot received the 1993 Wolf Prize in Physics for "having changed our view of nature." In addition, he has received many other awards and prizes including the 1985 F. Bernard Medal for Meritorious Service to Science granted by the National Academy of Sciences and Columbia University, the 1988 Science for Art Prize from Moet-HennessyLouis Vuitton, and a Distinguished Service Award for Outstanding Achievement from the California Institute of Technology. He has received honorary degrees from several universities including Syracuse University, Boston University, and the State University of New York. His work: For forty years, Professor Mandelbrot has been seeking a measure of order in physical, mathematical, or social phenomena that are characterized by abundant data but extreme variability. He is best known as the founder of fractal geometry. The surprising esthetic value of many of their discoveries and their unexpected usefulness in teaching have made him an eloquent spokesman for "the unity of knowing and feeling." He is the author of the books Les objets fractals (1975, 1984, 1989) and The Fractal Geometry of Nature (1982).

  (This information was taken from the Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series Program 1991-1992).

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  Genes and the Origins of Cancer

  Robert A. Weinberg

  Robert A. Weinberg is a founding member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Robert A. Weinberg received his S.B. in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1964 and his Ph.D. from the same institution in 1969. After four years of postdoctoral research with Ernest Winocour at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovoth, Israel, and Renatto Dulbecco at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, Dr. Weinberg returned to his alma mater in 1972 to work as a research associate with David Baltimore. In 1973 he was made a faculty member in the Department of Biology, where he continues to work today. In addition to his position at MIT, Dr. Weinberg became a founding member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in 1982. Included in Dr. Weinberg's list of over twenty-five honors are the Discover Magazine Scientist of the Year Award (1982), the Armand Hammer Cancer Prize, the Bristol-Meyers Award for Distinguished Achievement in Cancer Research, election to the National Academy of Sciences, and the Sloan Prize of the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation. His work: Dr. Weinberg has a long publication record (in both the technical and more popular literature) on the molecular basis of cancer, or more specifically, how normal cells become "transformed" into cancer cells. His lab is currently investigating the regulation of the ras family of oncogenes, which are found in an unregulated form in cancers of the bone marrow, bladder, breast, skin, lung, colon, and brain. He is also interested in the activity of the retinoblastoma gene, a so-called tumor suppressor gene. He is coauthor (with Harold Varmus) of Genes and the Biology of Cancer, a volume in the Scientific American Library series.

  (This information was taken from the Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series Program 1993-1994).

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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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  Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series Program 1991-1992

  Bard College

  Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series Brochure 1991-1992, published by the Bard Center

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  Can Simple Chemical Reactions Tell us How the Leopard Got Its Spots?

  Irving R. Epstein

  (Abstract taken from the Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series Program 1991-1992).

  Born in New York City, Professor on Oscillating Chemical Reactions Epstein received a B.A. in Chemistry in 1982. He currently serves on and Physics in 1966, an M.A. in the Science Council, New England Chemistry in 1968 and a Ph.D. in Region, of the Weizmann Institute, Chemical Physics (with W.N. and is an editor of Chaos: An Lipscomb) in 1971, all from Harvard Interdisciplinary Journal of Non- University. He also holds a Diploma linear Science. in Advanced Mathematics from Oxford University, where he studied as a Marshall Scholar with the late C.A. Coulson. He was a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University, in 1971, and an NSF Faculty Professional Development Fellow in the laboratory of Manfred Eigen at the Max-Planck-lnstitut liir Biophysikalische Chemie in Giittingen in 1977-78. He has received Woodrow Wilson, Guggenheim and Humboldt Fellowships as well as a Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar Award. He has taught at Brandeis since 1971, and served as Chemistry Department Chairman from 1983 to 1987. April 11, 1992 Irving R. Epstein is Helena Rubinstein Professor of Chemistry and a member of the Center for Complex Systems at Brandeis University. His work: Dr. Epstein's research interests revolve around nonlinear dynamical behavior in systems of chemical and biological interest. His group developed the first systematic approach to designing new chemical oscillators, and they have pioneered in the discovery and mechanistic analysis of oscillating chemical reactions. Author of more than 175 publications, Dr. Epstein's current research interests include the behavior of systems of coupled chemical oscillators and the study of neural oscillators, both singly and in coupled networks. Dr. Epstein organized and chaired the first Gordon Research Conference on Oscillating Chemical Reactions in 1982. He currently serves on the Science Council, New England Region, of the Weizmann Institute, and is an editor of Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Non-linear Science.

  His work: Dr. Epstein's research interests revolve around nonlinear dynamical behavior in systems of chemical and biological interest. His group developed the first systematic approach to designing new chemical oscillators, and they have pioneered in the discovery and mechanistic analysis of oscillating chemical reactions. Author of more than 175 publications, Dr. Epstein's current research interests include the behavior olfsystems of coupled chemical oscillators and the study of neural oscillators, both singly and in coupled networks.

  Irving R. Epstein is Helena Rubinstein Professor of Chemistry and a member of the Center for Complex Systems at Brandeis University.

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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.)

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  Data Structures

  Robert E. Tarjan

  (Abstract taken from Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series Program 1991-1992)

  Professor Tarjan received his B.S. degree in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology in 1969 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Stanford University in 1971 and 1972, respectively. He was an assistant professor at Cornell University (1972-73), a Miller Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley (1973-75), and assistant professor (1975-77) and then associate professor (1977-80) at Stanford University. He was affiliated with At&T Bell Labs from 1980 to 1990, most recently in the capacity of Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff. In 1985 Professor Tarjan was appointed the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Computer Science at Princeton. In addition to his faculty appointment at Princeton University, Professor Tarjan is the co-director of the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, located at Rutgers University, and also Adjunct Fellow of the NEC Research Institute of Princeton, New Jersey.

  Professor Tarjan was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1987. He was awarded the Nevanlinna Prize in Information Science in 1983 by the International Mathematical Union and received the A.M. Turing Award of the Association for Computing Machinery in 1986. Professor Tarjan is currently a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Philosophical Society.

  His work: Professor Tarjan is well known for his pioneering work on the design and analysis of algorithms and data structures and is widely published in these and related fields. His current research interests continue to include the design and analysis of data structures and combinatorial algorithms, discrete optimization, and computational complexity

  Robert E. Tarjan is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University.

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  The Human Genome Project

  James D. Watson

  (Abstract taken from the Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series Program 1992-1992).

  Born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1928, Dr. Watson received a B.S. (1947) from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. (1950) from Indiana University, both in zoology. Following a National Research Fellowship in Copenhagen and a National Foundation of Infantile Paralysis Fellowship at the University of Cambridge, England, he spent two years at the California Institute of Technology. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1955 and became Professor in 1961, resigning in 1976 to become Director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. In 1988 he was also appointed Associate Director tor Human Genome Research of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Watson was awarded the John Collins Warren Prize of Massachusetts General Hospital (1959), the Eli Lilly Award in Biochemistry (1960), the Albert Lasker Prize, awarded by the American Public Health Association (1960), the Research Corporation Prize (1962), the John J. Carty Gold Medal of the National Academy of Sciences (1971 ), and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977). His memberships include the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1958), the American Society of Biological Chemists (1958), the National Academy of Sciences (1962), the American Association for Cancer Research (1972), and the American Philosophical Society (1977). He holds honorary affiliations with the Danish Academy of Arts and Sciences (1963), Clare College, Cambridge University (1968), Athenaeum, London (1980), the Royal Society, London (1981) and the Academy of Sciences, USSR (1989). Dr. Watson has received honorary degrees from fourteen universities and has published live books: Molecular Biology of the Gene, The Double Helix, The DNA Story, Molecular Biology of the Cell, and Recombinant DNA: A Short Course.

  His work: James D. Watson is best known tor his discovery of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), tor which he shared with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The "Watson and Crick" model of DNA structure lead inevitably to a revolution in biology which culminated in the development of modern recombinant-DNA techniques. James D. Watson is the Director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Associate Director for Human Genome Research of the National Institutes of Health.

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  Science and Science Policy in the 21st Century: A Modest Proposal

  Leon Cooper

  (Abstract taken from the Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series Program 1991-1992).

  Leon Cooper was born and bred in New York City, attending the Bronx High School of Science and Columbia University (B.A. '51, Ph.D. '54). After receiving his Ph.D., Dr. Cooper became a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Following short residencies at the University of Illinois and Ohio State University, he proceeded to Brown University in 1958 and became the Henry Ledyard Goddard University Professor there in 1966 and the Thomas J. Watson, Sr. Professor of Science in 1974. He is long time co-chairman of Brown University's Center for Neural Sciences, the successor to the Center for Neural Studies, of which he was the first director, with an inter-disciplinary staff drawn from the departments of Applied Mathematics, Biomedical Sciences, Linguistics, and Physics. He is also co-founder and co-chair­ man of Nestor, Inc., an industry leader in neural network systems applications. In recognition of his work Dr. Cooper has received, in addition to the Nobel Prize, the Comstock Prize (with J.R. Schrieffer) of the National Academy of Sciences, the Award of Excellence of the Graduate Faculties Alumni of Columbia University, the Descartes Medal of the Academie de Paris, Universite Rene Descartes, and the John Jay Award of Columbia College.

  His work:

  For his studies on the theory of superconductivity, completed when he was in his twenties, Dr. Cooper shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1972 with John Bardeen and J.R. Schrieffer. For the past twenty years he has been doing leading work on animal nervous systems and the human brain, working towards a scientific model of how the mind works.

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  Human-Accelerated Environmental Change

  Gene E. Likens

  (Abstract taken from 1991-1992 Distinguished Scientist Lecture Program).

  Dr. Likens obtained a B.S. degree from Manchester College in 1957, and his MS. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1959 and 1962. An instructor and associate professor at Dartmouth College (1963-1969), Dr. Likens moved to Cornell University in 1969, where he was promoted to full professor in 1972 and appointed Charles A. Alexander Professor of Biological Sciences in 1983. Before joining the New York Botanical Garden, Dr. Likens was Chairman of the Section of Ecology and Systematics at Cornell. In addition to his roles with the Botanical Garden, Dr. Likens retains faculty appointments at Yale University (Professor of Biology), Cornell (Adjunct Professor of Ecology and Systematics), and Rutgers University (Professor in the Graduate Field of Ecology). Dr. Likens is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Royal Swedish

  Academy of Sciences (foreign member). He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a recipient of both a NATO Senior Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the first recipient of the G.E. Hutchinson Award for excellence in research. In addition to numerous other prizes and awards, Dr. Likens has received five honorary doctorates. His work: Dr. Likens is an ecologist best known for his discovery of acid rain in North America. He is a co-director of the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study, a multidisciplinary ecological analysis of forest, stream, and lake ecosystems in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. An advisor at state, national, and international levels on the ecological effects of air pollution and acid rain, Dr. Likens is author, co-author, or editor of over 300 research articles and ten books.

  Gene E. Likens is Vice President of the New York Botanical Garden, and Director of the Institute of Ecosystem Studies at the Mary Flagler Cary Arboretum, Millbrook, New York.

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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