2003 - 2004 Series
Dr. Tartar's talk is titled "SETI: Science Fact, Not
Fiction"
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Jill Tartar, Ph.D
Physicist and Director of the SETI Institute
Jill Tartar is one of the leaders of the scientific effort to
discover intelligent life in the universe beyond our planet. As
director of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence)
Institute, Dr. Tartar leads a team of scientists who develop and
utilize observational and analytical methods to search the universe
for signals indicative of intelligent life.
Dr. Tartar received her Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University
of California at Berkeley. She began SETI research with U.C.'s
project SERENDIP as a graduate student. After a post-doctoral
appointment with NASA Ames' Space Sciences Office, Dr. Tarter
continued research in SETI and was named Project Scientist for
NASA's High Resolution Microwave Survey. After the loss of NASA
funding for SETI, Dr. Tarter was named Director of the Institute's
Project Phoenix, a position which she continues to hold.
An active hands-on SETI observer, Dr. Tarter has achieved many
distinctions in her career. She holds the Lifetime Achievement
Award from Women in Aerospace for her contributions to the fields
of Exobiology and SETI. Dr. Tarter's distinctions include election
as member of the International Academy of Astronautics, Fellow of
the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the
Paranormal, President (1994-1997) of International Astronomical
Union Commission 51, Chair of the International Academy of
Astronautics SETI Committee, and numerous appointments to senior
scientific advisory panels. She was also named 1997 "Person of the
Year" by Chabot Science Center and is the recipient of two Public
Service Medals from the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration.
Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University
Tuesday, December 2, 2003
Kay Redfield Jamison
Psychiatry Professor and Mental Health Advocate
An international authority and researcher on mood disorders, and
a 2001 recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, Kay
Redfield Jamison has unique insight into the world of mental
illness, having been there herself.
In 1995, as Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University,
she shocked her colleagues by going public with her own struggle
with manic-depressiveness in a Washington Post article and
subsequent book, An Unquiet Mind. The book became a New
York Times bestseller and was cited by several major publications
as one of the best of the year.
Jamison completed her undergraduate and graduate work at UCLA,
where she was a National Science Foundation Research Fellow, a John
F. Kennedy Scholar, and UCLA Graduate Woman of the Year. She became
Director of the UCLA Affective Disorders Clinic, was selected as
one of five individuals for the PBS-TV series Great Minds of
Medicine and was chosen by Time as a "Hero of Medicine." Her books
for general audiences include Touched with Fire (1993), a
study of the connection between manic-depression and creativity,
Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide (1999), and
Exuberance: The Vital Emotion (2003).
Dr. Jamison has published over 100 articles in academic
journals. She is co-author of the standard medical textbook on
manic-depression, which was chosen in 1990 as the most outstanding
book in Biomedical Sciences by the American Association of
Publishers.
Professor of Anthropology at New York University
Thursday, February 12, 2004
Emily Martin is Professor of Anthropology at
New York University. Her research interests include the
anthropology of science and medicine, gender, money and other
measures of value, the anthropology of work, and China.
Martin began her career with field work in China and Taiwan, and
has published extensively on Chinese ritual and politics. However
it was her 1987 book The Woman in the Body: a Cultural Analysis
of Reproduction (Boston: Beacon Press), an innovative analysis
of American understandings of reproduction, that brought her
international recognition. Subsequent research has been into local
knowledge about immune systems (published in her 1994 book
"Flexible Bodies: Tracking Immunity in American Culture from the
Days of Polio to the Age of Aids," Beacon Press) and, most
recently, about mental illness.
Dr. Martin will present an historical and ethnographic analysis
of the ways moods have been graphed and charted, from the early
20th century to the present. Changes in the techniques of recording
moods will be discussed in relation to their impact on
subjectivities, regimes of regulation and control, and the cultural
value placed on hyper states such as mania.
PhD in zoology from Oxford University
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
After receiving a PhD in zoology from Oxford University,
Matt Ridley became a journalist. From 1983 to 1992
he served as the senior editor for The Economist. From 1993 to
2000, he was a columnist for the Sunday Telegraph and Daily
Telegraph. He has written articles and book reviews for major
publications including The Times, Guardian, Times Literary
Supplement, New Statesman, TIME, Newsweek, New York Times, Wall
Street Journal, Atlantic Monthly, Discover, and Natural
History. His books include The Red Queen: Sex and the
Evolution of Human Nature (1993), The Origins of Virtue:
Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation (1996),
Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters (1999),
and Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience and What Makes Us
Human (2003). In Nature via Nurture he describes the
dependent relationship between the genes and their environment,
examines this synergistic relationship in human development, and
discusses the human condition of being simultaneously free-willed
and motivated by instinct and culture.
In a recent interview about the human genome project, Ridley
said: "For the first time in four billion years, a species on this
planet has read its own recipe, or is in the process of reading its
own recipe. That seems to me to be an epochal moment, because we're
going to get depths of insight into the nature of human nature that
we never could have imagined, and that will dwarf anything that
philosophers and indeed scientists have managed to produce in the
last two millennia."
Dr. Ridley is currently chairman of the International Centre for
Life, an education project and visitor center that is highly
regarded for its serious research in genetics and located in
Newcastle upon Tyne.