Thursday, April 4, 2013 at 8:00 pm

NOTE:  McCosh 10

Cosponsored by the Spencer Trask Lectures Series and the Program of Belknap Visitors in the Humanities

The Thinking Eye

Edward Tufte, data theorist and pioneer in the field of data visualization, will discuss seeing, reasoning, and producing in high science and high art.   His latest project “The Thinking Eye” examines “forever knowledge” and helping people “see without words.”

Edward Tufte,  Professor Emeritus Political Science at Yale University, previously taught at Princeton.  His books include “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information” (1983), “Visual Explanation” (1997) and “Beautiful Evidence” (2006).   A data theorist and sculptor, he has been described by the New York Times as “The Leonardo da Vinci of data” and by Business Week as “the Galileo of Graphics.”

May 2, 2013

Louis Clark Vanuxem Lecture

Lisa Randall is the Frank J. Baird, Jr., Professor Science at Harvard University and a leading expert on particle physics and cosmology.

Tuesday, April 30, 2013 at 8:00 pm

McCosh 50

Walter E. Edge Lecture

Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership in a Time of Austerity: A Strong, Pragmatic and Principled Approach to U.S. National Security

Former Under Secretary of Defense Michèle Flournoy will discuss the tough choices we need to make in order to maintain the foundations of U.S. power and influence. In order to set the conditions for long-term economic recovery, the United States must stay engaged in the world and adapt to 21st century realities. Sustaining American global leadership will require a pragmatic, principled approach, which Flournoy offers as the basis for a new bipartisan consensus.

Michèle Flournoy served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from 2009 – 2012, the highest-ranking civilian woman to ever serve in the Defense Department.  She founded and was named President of the Center for a New American Security.  She previously served as a Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and as a Distinguished Research Professor at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University.

Juggling Mathematics and Magic

Monday, April 22, 2013

Louis Clark Vanuxem Lecture

NOTE:  McCosh 50

The mystery of magic and the art of juggling have surprising links to interesting ideas from mathematics. In this talk, Professor Graham will illustrate some of these connections.

Ronald Graham, Irwin and Joan Jacobs Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, UCSD, is a past president of both the Mathematical Association of America and the International Juggler’s Association.  This event is cosponsored by the Mathematics Department.

The Social Conquest of Earth 

Monday, April 8, 2013 at 8:00 pm, McCosh 50

Cosponsored by Vanuxem Lecture Series and the Program of Belknap Visitors in the Humanities

Where do humans come from?  What are we?  Biologist Edward O. Wilson, one of our greatest living scientists, draws on his unparalleled knowledge of evolution and social behavior to show that group selection, not kin selection, serves as the primary driving force of human evolution.  Dr. Wilson will discuss the seventeen known cases of animal species with advanced social behavior based on the reproductive division of labor to throw new light on the circumstances under which the human species evolved.  Approached as a very rare product of evolution by multilevel natural selection, the human condition can be analyzed with greater effectiveness.

Edward O. Wilson is a University Research Professor Emeritus at Harvard.  His many books include “Sociobiology: The New Synthesis” (1975); “On Human Nature” (1979); “The Diversity of Life” (1992); “The Future of Life” (2002); and “The Social Conquest of Earth” (2012).

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

8:00 pm, McCosh 50

Stereotype Threat:  How It Affects us and What We Can Do About It

Claude Steele, internationally renowned social scientist and Dean of the Graduate School of Education at Stanford, will discuss his theory of stereotype threat, which has been the focus of much of his research and writing throughout his academic career. The theory examines how people from different groups, being threatened by different stereotypes, can have quite different experiences in the same situation. It has also been used to understand group differences in performance ranging from the intellectual to the athletic. Steele’s recent book, “Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do,” published in 2010, was based on this research and lays out a plan to mitigate the negative effects of “stereotype threat”.

Claude Steele, is the I. James Quillen Dean, Stanford University School of Education and Author of Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us

Location: McCormick Hall, Room 106

Date/Time: December 6, 2012, 5:00 pm

Author Susan Heuck Allen will discuss her book “Classical Spies: American Archaeologists with the OSS in World War II Greece.”  This event is cosponsored by the Princeton Society of the Archaeological Institute of America and Princeton Public Lectures.

Politics and the Organization Kid
November 26, 2012

A decade after David Brooks visited the Princeton campus and diagnosed the students as professional “Organization Kids,” the New York Times columnist returns to take a second temperature and explore how this achievement ethos has served the country and its elite, both for good and for ill, and what this means in light of the current political environment.

David Brooks is a New York Times columnist, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, a contributing editor at Newsweek and the Atlantic Monthly, and a commentator on “The PBS Newshour.”  He is the author of “Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There” and “On Paradise Drive : How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense,” both published by Simon & Schuster. His most recent book is “The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement,” published by Random House in March 2011.

Thursday, March 14, 2013 at 8:00 pm

NOTE:  Dodds Auditorium, Robertson Hall

John Grotzinger, Chief Scientist for NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory Mission

The Mars Science Laboratory’s rover Curiosity is part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort to explore the red planet, to study the rich environmental history of early Mars, and to assess whether Mars ever had an environment able to support small life forms called microbes.  On August 5, 2012, Curiosity touched down on Mars’ Gale Crater, an area chosen as the field site for based on its regional context and strong evidence for a progression through multiple potentially habitable environments. Grotzinger will discuss the most recent mission results.

John Grotzinger is the Fletcher Jones Professor of Geology at Caltech.