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Celebrating 150 Years of Charles Darwin
a webcast lecture series in four parts shown in Rudder Theater
Faculty from Texas A&M University will answer questions after each lecture
Hosted by the Department of Biology, the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences,
the Faculty of Neuroscience, and the IRP in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The first two Darwin 150 lectures with Everett Mendelsohn (Harvard University) and Johnathan Wiener are now available via the new Darwin Vimeo Channel http://vimeo.com/channels/66600
We assume that the third lecture "The Making of the Fittest: Natural Selection and the DNA Record of Evolution" by Sean Carroll Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the University of Wisconsin) which was shown in Rudder Theater Nov. 4 will be added to this website soon.
Ira Greenbaum, Professor, Department of Biology, will serve as host and panelist for all lectures
Wednesday, September 16, 7 pm
“The World Before Darwin”
Everett Mendelsohn
Professor of the History of Science, Emeritus
Research Professor of the History of Science
TAMU Panelists:
C.O. Patterson, Professor, Department of Biology
Thomas DeWitt, Associate Professor,
Plant Pathology and Microbiology, Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences
Karen-Beth Scholthof, Professor, Plant Pathology and Miccrobiology
Everett Mendelsohn has been on the faculty of the Department of the History of Science since 1960. He has worked extensively on the history of the life sciences as well as on aspects of the social and sociological history of science and the relations of science and modern societies. Prior to retirement, he taught a large undergraduate course as part of Harvard's Core Curriculum, which focuses on science and society in the twentieth century; also he is the former Master of Dudley House, the graduate student center.
He is the founder and former editor of the Journal of the History of Biology and a founder of the yearbook Sociology of the Sciences. He serves(d) on the editorial boards of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Social Science and Medicine, Social Epistemology, Social Studies of Science, and Fundamenta Scientiae, among others.
He is past president of the International Council for Science Policy Studies and has been deeply involved in the relations between science and modern war as a founder of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Committee on Science, Arms Control, and National Security, and the American Academy of Arts and Science's Committee on International Security Studies. He was a founder and first president of the Cambridge based Institute for Peace and International Security. He was awarded the Gregor Mendel Medal of the reorganized Czechoslovak Academy of Science in 1991. During 1994 he held the Olof Palme Professorship in Sweden. He received recognition for his teaching when awarded the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize in 1996.
Among recent publications are the jointly edited volumes, The Practices of Human Genetics (1999); Biology as Society, Society as Biology: Metaphors (1994); Technology, Pessimism and Postmodernism (1993);Science, Technology, and the Military (1988). He has also written recent articles including: "Thinking Like a Mountain: The Epistemological Puzzle of Environmentalism;" "The Politics of Pessimism: Science and Technology Circa 1968;" "Prophet of Our Discontent, Lewis Mumford Confronts the Bomb;" "The Social Locus of Scientific Instruments;" "Religious Fundamentalism and the Sciences;" and "Grasping the Elusive Peace in the Middle East."
Wednesday, November 4, 7 pm
“The Making of the Fittest: Natural Selection and the DNA Record of Evolution”
Sean B. Carroll
Professor
University of Wisconsin
TAMU Panelists:
Gil Rosenthal, Associate Professor, Department of Biology
Alan Pepper, Associate Professor, Department of Biology
Michael Tobler, Post Doc, Department of Biology
Jijayanagaram Venkatraj, Asst. Professor, Veterinary Integrative Biosciences
Sean Carroll is Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics and an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Wisconsin. His research has centered on the genes that control animal body patterns and play major roles in the evolution of animal diversity. Major discoveries from his laboratory have been featured in TIME, US News & World Report, The New York Times, Discover, and Natural History.
Sean is the author of The Making of the Fittest (2006, W.W. Norton) and of Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo(2005, W.W. Norton). He is also co-author with Jen Grenier and Scott Weatherbee of the textbook From DNA to Diversity: Molecular Genetics and the Evolution of Animal Design (2nd ed, 2005; Blackwell Scientific) and with Anthony Griffiths, Richard Lewontin, and Susan Wessler of the textbook Introduction to Genetic Analysis(9e, 2007, W.H. Freeman and Co.). He is also the author or co-author of more than 100 scientific papers.
Sean is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (elected 2007) and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has received the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, the Shaw Scientist Award of the Milwaukee Foundation, and numerous honorary lectureships. Sean was named one of America's most promising leaders under 40 by TIME Magazine in 1994.
He earned his B.A. in Biology at Washington University in St. Louis, his Ph.D. in Immunology at Tufts Medical School, and carried out his postdoctoral research with Dr. Matthew Scott at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
Sean lives in Madison, Wisconsin with his wife Jamie and two sons.
Tuesday, November 24, 12 noon
“Frontiers of Evolution”
E.O. Wilson et al., Harvard
TAMU Panelists:
Adam Jones, Associate Professor, Department of Biology
Mary Wicksten, Professor, Department of Biology
Tuesday, November 24, 5 pm
“Celebrating 150 Years of 'Origin of Species'"
Terrence Deacon
Professor
University of California, Berkeley
Terrence Deacon is a Professor of Biological Anthropology and Neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley. His research combines human evolutionary biology and neuroscience, with the aim of investigating the evolution of human cognition. His work extends from laboratory-based cellular-molecular neurobiology to the study of semiotic processes underlying animal and human communication, especially language. Deacon explored many of his interests in the 1997 book, The Symbolic Species: The Coevolution of Language and the Brain and he is at work on a new book, Homunculus, which explores the relationship between evolutionary and semiotic processes.
Gerald M. Edelman
Chairman
The Neurosciences Institute and The Scripps Research Institute
Gerald Edelman is Chairman of the Department of Neurobiology at the Scripps Research Institute. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology in 1972 for his work on the structure and function of antibodies. His research focuses on studies of cell-cell interactions during embryonic development and of cell adhesion molecules and their role in neural development and plasticity. His lab also conducts studies of the molecular genetics of connectional defects in the nervous system, and studies of transcriptional regulation and translational control in eukaryotic cells. His theoretical work looks at the organization of higher brain functions and the construction of non-von Neumann machines and brain-based devices.
Paul Ekman
Professor Emeritus
University of California, San Francisco and Paul Ekman Group LLC
Paul Ekman is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, San Franscisco, and Manager of the Paul Ekman Group LLC. He is a distinguished psychologist known for developing the Facial Action Coding System for understanding human expression across cultures. In 2001 the American Psychological Association named him as one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century based on publications, citations, and awards, and in 2009 he was named by TIME Magazine as one of the top 100 most influential people of the year. He has written or edited 15 books. His two most recent books are Emotions Revealed, 2008, and Emotional Awareness, which he coauthored with the Dalai Lama in 2008.
Rajesh Miranda, Professor, Neuroscience and Experimental Therapeutics, TAMHSC
TAMU Panelists:
Mark Zoran, Associate Professor, Department of Biology
