March 8, 2002

Volume 30, Number 21

Civic engagement in America is subject of Storrs Lectures

Theda Skocpol, the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University, will present the Storrs Lecture Series on the topic "Civic Engagement in American Democracy" at the Law School March 11, 12 and 14.

Her first lecture, "How America Became Civic," will be given on Monday, March 11. She will then discuss "The Recent Shift from Membership to Management" on Tuesday, March 12, and "Reinventing American Civic Democracy" on Thursday, March 14. All talks will take place at 4:30 p.m. in Rm. 127 of the Sterling Law Buildings, 127 Wall St., and a reception will follow the Monday lecture in the Alumni Reading Room. Sponsored by the Law School, the Storrs Lectures are free and open to the public.

Skocpol is also director of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard. She serves on the editorial board of the American Political Science Review and co-edits a book series on American politics for Princeton University Press. She is the author or editor of a number of books, including the award-winning "States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China" and "Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States."

A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Social Insurance, Skocpol is a former president of the Social Science History Association. She is president-elect of the American Political Science Association.

Leigh Page Prize Lectures to explore supernovae, dark energy

Saul Perlmutter, senior scientist at the E.O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, will present the 2002 Leigh Page Prize Lectures March 26, 27 and 29.

Perlmutter will discuss "Supernovae, Dark Energy and an Accelerating Universe" on Tuesday, March 26; "Dark Energy Challenges the Physicists" on Wednesday, March 27; and "Studying Dark Energy with Supernovae (The Part of the Story that Always Gets Left Out of Departmental Colloquia)" on Friday, March 29. All talks will take place 4:305:30 p.m. in the lounge of the Sloane Physics Laboratory, 217 Prospect St. Tea will be served before each lecture at 4 p.m. The talks, sponsored by the Department of Physics, are free and open to the public.

Perlmutter is the leader of the Supernova Cosmology Project, an international collaboration of research teams from seven countries. He has been honored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, receiving Science Magazine's "1998 Breakthrough of the Year" Award for measurements indicating an accelerating universe.

Perlmutter has authored more than 70 papers in the fields of physics, astrophysics and cosmology. He is frequent invited lecturer and author, and has appeared in PBS and BBC cosmology documentaries. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society.

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