Nobel Prize-winning biochemist to talk at master's tea
Paul Berg, a noted DNA researcher who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1980, will be the guest at a tea on Tuesday, Nov. 19, at 4:30 p.m. in the Calhoun College master's house, 434 College St. The event is free and open to the public; however, as space is limited, those interested in attending should call 432-0742.
Since early in his career, Mr. Berg has been at the forefront of both recombinant DNA research and its regulation. A professor of biochemistry at Stanford University since 1959, he first gained recognition for delineating the key steps in which DNA produces proteins. In the mid-1970s, the National Academy of Sciences asked Mr. Berg to explore the safety of recombinant DNA technology; he responded with the so-called "Berg letter," which called for a moratorium on recombinant DNA research until safety issues could be addressed. He was one of the key organizers of the 1975 Asilomar Conference, an international forum that explored the potential risks of gene splicing experiments. The scientists' discussion at that conference resulted a year later in the publication of the National Institutes of Health NIH guidelines for DNA research.
In 1985, Mr. Berg became director of Stanford University's Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine, and in 1991 he was appointed head of the scientific advisory committee for the NIH's Human Genome Project. For the past 10 years, he has focused his research on the development and application of recombinant DNA and related methodologies for the analysis of genetic recombination in eukaryotic cells. Also an adviser to Affymtrix, Inc., for which he is developing technology to use computers for disease diagnosis, Mr. Berg specializes in producing high-speed DNA scanning technology that puts precise genetic codes on microchips and can be used to identify unknown traces of DNA. In addition to the Nobel Prize, his numerous honors include a National Medal of Science of 1983 and an honorary degree from Yale in 1978.
Writer for The New Yorker to present Woodward Lecture
Alma Guillermoprieto, staff writer at The New Yorker, will present a Woodward Fund Lecture on the topic "Mexico, The Watershed Years" on Wednesday, Nov. 20, at 12:30 p.m. in Rm. 410 of Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall, corner of Grove and Prospect streets. Sponsored by the Yale Center for International and Area Studies and the Council on Latin American Studies with support from the Woodward Lecture Fund, the event is free and open to the public. A light buffet lunch will be available at no charge.
Ms. Guillermoprieto has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992. She has been a contributor to the magazine since 1989, when her first "Letter from Bogota" was published. She has since written numerous articles on Latin America, including reports on the uprisings in Chiapas, Mexico, and about Pablo Escobar and the Colombian drug cartels. Her article on the Shining Path in Peru was nominated for a National Magazine Award in 1994.
Ms. Guillermoprieto is also the author of two books. Her first, "Samba," was nominated for the 1990 National Book Critics Circle Award. Her second, "The Heart That Bleeds," brings together 13 stories which originally ran in The New Yorker between 1989 and 1993. Last year, Ms. Guillermoprieto won a MacArthur Fellowship in recognition of her "accomplishments in journalism which demonstrate originality, creativity, and ability to make a contribution to our life," according to the award announcement. She is also the recipient of the Columbia University's 1990 Maria Moors Cabot Prize and the 1992 Latin American Studies Association Award. In 1994 she became the first winner of the Samuel Chavkin Prize for Integrity in Latin American Journalism.
Biblical scholar to talk about 'first man of prayer'
"Who Was the First Man of Prayer?: New Light on Genesis 4:26" is the title of a lecture being presented on Wednesday, Nov. 20, by Israel Knohl, senior lecturer in Bible at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held at 4 p.m. in the Romance Language Lounge, on the third floor of 82-90 Wall St. It is sponsored by the Program in Judaic Studies with support from the Barbara and Morris Levinson Lecture Fund.
Mr. Knohl earned his doctorate in talmudic and biblical studies from Hebrew University, and he is currently a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies there. He has been a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University. He is the author of "The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness" and other studies on ancient Israelite and early Jewish priesthood and worship.
French paleoclimatologist to deliver Flint lectures
Jean Jouzel, a paleoclimatologist and director of research at the French Atomic Energy Agency, will deliver the three-part Richard Foster Flint Lectures Wednesday-Friday, Nov. 20-22. He will present one lecture a day on the topics "Climate Reconstruction from Water Isotopes: What We Learn from Isotopic Models," "Deep Ice Cores from Greenland and Antarctica: The Last Glacial-Interglacial Cycle" and "Deep Ice Cores from Greenland and Antarctica: Recent Results," respectively. The talks will be held at 4 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday and at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, all in Rm. 123 of the Kline Geology Laboratory KGL , 210 Whitney Ave. Tea will be served prior to the Wednesday and Thursday lectures at 3:30 p.m. in Rm. 101 KGL. The public is invited to attend, free of charge.
Mr. Jouzel has been involved for many years in climate reconstruction from deuterium and oxygen 18 in ice cores and in associated modeling of water isotopes in the atmosphere. He and his team have participated in major international deep ice core programs in Antarctica and Greenland. Mr. Jouzel has also played a key role in the inclusion of water isotope cycles in General Circulation Models of the Atmosphere. He is also associate director of the French Atomic Energy Agency's Laboratory for Climate and Environmental Modeling and is chair of the European Program for Ice Coring in Antarctica, a long-term scientific drilling project at two sites on the continent.
The lecture series on glacial and quaternary geology honor the late Richard Foster Flint, who was the Henry Barnard Davis Professor of Geology at Yale.
Medical director to present two talks at School of Medicine
Dr. Patricia A. Gabow, manager chief executive officer and medical director of Denver Health and Hospitals in Denver, Colorado, will present two talks during a visit to campus on Thursday, Nov. 21.
At 8:30 a.m., Dr. Gabow will present the 1996 Phyllis Bodel Memorial Lecture on "America's Safety Net: Past, Present? Future" at medical grand rounds. Her talk will take place in Fitkin Amphitheater of the School of Medicine, 333 Cedar St. The Phyllis Bodel Memorial Lecture was established to honor the late Dr. Phyllis Tuck Bodel, a physician scientist in the department of internal medicine.
Later that day, at 1 p.m., Dr. Gabow will talk on the topic "Mentoring: Life is a Series of Useful Lessons" in Brady Auditorium of Lauder Hall, 310 Cedar St. Coffee and dessert will be served prior to her talk at noon. Both events are free and open to the public.
Dr. Gabow was named to her current position in 1992. She is also a professor of medicine in the division of renal diseases at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, where she has taught since 1973. Dr. Gabow has received numerous honors, including the Kaiser Permanente Award for Excellence in Teaching, the National Board of the Medical College of Pennsylvania's Annual Award to an Outstanding Woman Physician and the Seton Hill College Distinguished Alumna Leadership Award. She is listed in the 1994- 95 edition of the annual publication "The Best Doctors in America," which are selected by a national poll of physicians.
Dr. Gabow has testified before Congress on issues pertaining to Medicare and Medicaid and has addressed such issues as urban violence and health care reform at national meetings and conferences. She serves as a member of the Denver mayor's cabinet and is on the editorial boards of the Western Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
Author and book reviewer to be guest at master's tea
Phyllis Rose M.A. '65, an English professor at Wesleyan University and author of the biography "Woman of Letters: A Life of Virginia Woolf," will be the featured guest at a tea on Thursday, Nov. 21, at 4:30 p.m. in the Calhoun College master's house, 434 College St. The public is invited; however, as space is limited, those interested in attending should call 432-0742.
Professor Rose's other books are "Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages," "Writing of Women: Essays in a Renaissance," "Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time," "Never Say Goodbye: Essays" and a work in progress titled "The Year of Reading Proust." She is the editor of "The Norton Book of Women's Lives" and has written book reviews and articles for many publications, including The New York Times Book Review, the Boston Globe, The Washington Post Book World, the Atlantic Monthly, Mirabella, Vogue, The Yale Review and the Hartford Courant.
A finalist for the National Book Award for Biography for her volume on Virginia Woolf, Professor Rose was also a finalist for the National Book Critics' Circle Citation for Excellence in Reviewing in 1988. She was named a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library in 1989.
Music and medicine is topic of talk by Dartmouth professor
"Music, Madness, Medicine and the Muses" is the title of a talk being presented on Thursday, Nov. 21, by Steven P. Scher, professor of German at Dartmouth College. His talk, part of a series sponsored by the Program for Humanities in Medicine, will begin at 5 p.m. in the Beaumont Room of the Sterling Hall of Medicine, 333 Cedar St. It is free and open to the public.
Professor Scher will focus on selected aspects of music and medicine as well as medicine-inspired literary treatments of music, rather than on music as medical therapy. Topics will include musical representations of disease, illness as a music metaphor, varieties of "operatic madness" and the figure of the deranged musician in fiction. Professor Scher will illustrate his points using musical examples.
Science magazine writer to speak at Boyer Center
Wade Roush, a writer for Science magazine, will be the first speaker in a new discussion series titled "Dimensions of the Scientific Profession," which will explore the many career paths available to scientists. The series is cosponsored by the Boyer Center for Molecular Medicine and the Office of Women in Medicine.
Mr. Roush will talk on the topic "Science Journalism and Scientific Publishing: One Insider's View" on Monday, Nov. 25, at 3:30 p.m. in Rm. 208 of the Boyer Center, 295 Congress Ave. Refreshments will be served following the talk, which is free and open to the public.
Mr. Roush, who holds a doctorate in the history of science and technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had intended to pursue a career in science. He changed his course when, as an undergraduate, he realized the romance of astronomy bore little relation to the reality of what astronomers actually do, he has said. He thus decided to become a writer.
"Being a science writer is one of the few ways one can immerse oneself in science without getting on the tenure track," Mr. Roush says. "It's both terrifying and exhilarating to have to pick up a new subject each week, learn it from scratch and write an article that's going to be seen by 150,000 Ph.D.'s."
He has described the difficulties in finding the balance between writing an article that is scientifically accurate but sufficiently general to enable non-specialists to understand the material. "Because we want physicists to be able to read about biology and biologists to read about physics, the article we write can't be much more technical than the articles you'd see in a good newspaper," Mr. Roush explains. "I constantly walk a fine line between oversimplifying and going over the top of the heads of non- specialists."
Noted musician to lecture and perform
Charles Rosen, pianist and scholar, will deliver the Bianca M. Finzi-Contini Calabresi Lecture on Tuesday, Dec. 3. He will illustrate his lecture, titled "The Benefits of Anachronism," with demonstrations on the piano. The public is invited to attend the free event, which will take place at 4:30 p.m. at the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall Street.
Mr. Rosen is internationally acclaimed for his performances and recordings of a repertoire that ranges from Bach to Elliott Carter. He is also a noted author. A professor emeritus of music and social thought at the University of Chicago, his book "The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven" received the National Book Award for Arts and Letters in 1972 and has been translated into seven languages. A revised edition, accompanied by a new recording of Beethoven's Sonatas Op. 106 and 110, will be published in 1997 by W.W. Norton. Among his other books are "Arnold Schoenberg," which earned the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award; "Sonata Forms," nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; and "Romanticism and Realism -- the Mythology of Nineteenth Century Art," written in collaboration with art historian Henri Zerner.
In the tradition of Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky, T.S. Eliot, and Robert Frost, Mr. Rosen held the Charles Eliot Norton Chair of Poetry at Harvard University. An expanded version of his six Norton Lectures, "The Romantic Generation: Music 1827-1850," was published in 1995 by Harvard University Press. The book, accompanied by a compact disc that features performances by Mr. Rosen of works discussed in the text, was called "a rarity: a work of detailed musical analysis that combines profound scholarship with artistic intuition" by The New York Times Book Review.
Mr. Rosen began his study of piano at Juilliard at age six. He earned undergraduate and advanced degrees in French literature from Princeton University, and studied in Paris as a Fulbright Scholar. He has held distinguished chairs and visiting professorships at leading universities in the United States and abroad, and has received numerous awards, including an honorary Doctor of Music degree from Cambridge University and the George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music in America from Johns Hopkins.
The Bianca M. Finzi-Contini Calabresi lectureship was endowed in 1990 by the Calabresi family, including the Honorable Guido Calabresi, judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and former dean of the Law School, and Dr. Paul Calabresi. Bianca Maria Finzi-Contini earned a Ph.D. in French at Yale and for many years was professor and chair of Italian at Albertus Magnus College. She died in 1982 at the age of 80. This lectureship in her name sponsors a distinguished speaker in the field of comparative literature.