2002 - 2003 Series
Physicist, Columbia University
Thursday, September 19, 2002
Brian Green
Dinosaur Paleontologist
Wednesday, October 2, 2002
Robert Bakker
Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition
Wednesday, February 12, 2003
Dr. V.S. Ramachandran is a pioneer in the field
of experimental neurology. His work has explored a diverse set of
phenomena, including phantom limbs, the neurological basis of
visual illusions, and the perception of art. In his critically
acclaimed book Phantoms in the Brain, Dr. Ramachandran
describes many of the simple yet telling experiments that he has
developed to help us understand the neurological basis of some of
the most puzzling of cognitive and perceptual phenomena. His work
has been featured on the PBS series Nova. Dr.
Ramachandran's lecture at Butler will be based upon his book.
Dr. Ramachandran is Director of the Center for Brain and
Cognition and a professor with the Psychology Department and the
Neurosciences Program at the University of California, San Diego,
and Adjunct Professor of Biology at the Salk Institute. He received
his MD from Stanley Medical College and his PhD from Trinity
College at the University of Cambridge.
Chemistry's Essential Tension: The Same and Not The Same
Tuesday, April 8, 2003
Chemist and Nobel Prize Winner, Cornell
University
Chemistry, poised between the physical and biological universes,
doesn't deal with the infinitely small or large. It is very much on
the human scale, and from that derives its great interest and its
problems. In this generously illustrated lecture several views of
chemistry will be presented: First of all, chemistry is, as it has
always been, the art, craft, business of substances and their
transformations. It is now also the science of molecules, both
simple and complex -- chemists always think simultaneously of
macroscopic substances and microscopic molecules changing. One must
also look at people's perception of chemistry, in terms of its
benefits, yes, but also in terms of its risks. Indeed, there is no
way that a human activity so closely tied to change can be viewed
without passion by people. This deeply democratizing science is
full of tensions, which will be explored in this lecture. As will
the strong element of creation or synthesis in chemistry, which
brings chemistry close to the arts.
Roald Hoffmann was born in 1937 in Zloczow,
Poland. Having survived the war, he came to the U. S. in 1949, and
studied chemistry at Columbia University and Harvard University
(Ph.D. 1962). Since 1965 he is at Cornell University, now as the
Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters. He has received
many of the honors of his profession, including the 1981 Nobel
Prize in Chemistry (shared with Kenichi Fukui).
"Applied theoretical chemistry" is the way Roald Hoffmann likes
to characterize the particular blend of computations stimulated by
experiment and the construction of generalized models, of
frameworks for understanding, that is his contribution to
chemistry.
Dr. Hoffmann also writes essays and poems. Two of his poetry
collections, "The Metamict State" (1987) and "Gaps and Verges"
(1990), have been published by the University Presses of
Florida.
In 1993 the Smithsonian Institution Press published "Chemistry
Imagined". A unique art/science/literature collaboration of Roald
Hoffmann with artist Vivian Torrence, "Chemistry Imagined" reveals
the creative and humanistic f sparks of the molecular science. In
1995, Columbia University Press published "The Same and Not the
Same", a thoughtful account of the dualities that lie under the
surface of chemistry. There will be German, Spanish, Korean,
Chinese, and Japanese editions of this book. In 1997 W.H. Freeman
published Old Wine, New Flasks; Reflections on Science and Jewish
Tradition, by Roald Hoffmann and Shira Leibowitz Schmidt, a book of
the intertwined voices of science and religion. Dr. Hoffmann is
also is the presenter of a television course, "The World of
Chemistry", now aired on many PBS stations and abroad.
This brief biography is taken from the Jewish
Studies web site at Cornell University. For a fuller biography
as well as access to Dr. Hoffman's Nobel lecture, visit the Nobel
Foundation's
e-museum.