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Contact: Mary Caffrey 609/258-5748
Date: May 4, 1998
 

Class of ’43 Invites Public to Hear Scientists Discuss ‘The Amazing Human Mind’

Princeton, N.J. -- In conduction with its 55th reunion, the Princeton Class of 1943 will present another in its series of programs on science for non-scientists. "The Amazing Human Mind" will take place Friday, May 29, 1998, from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in Richardson Auditorium, Alexander Hall. The program will feature seven faculty presentations to be followed by discussion with the audience.

At noon, coffee and box lunches will provided in a nearby tent, with music by The Princeton Underground. Class members and Princeton faculty have been invited, and the public is encouraged to attend at no charge on a first-come, first-served basis.

The program is designed to cover information from origin to death of the human mind as well as various aspects of known structure and function. Moderator for the forum will be Thomas W. Langfitt, M.D., Princeton Class of 1948. A neuroscientist, neurosurgeon and author, Dr. Langfitt has had a distinguished career at Johns Hopkins, Pennsylvania Hospital and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He is currently a senior fellow at the Wharton School of Business at Penn.

Individual participants and presentations are listed as follows (all are Princeton faculty unless otherwise noted):

• "Evolution of the Human Mind," by Professor of Molecular Biology Lee M. Silver, the author of the recent book, "Remaking Eden; Cloning in a Brave New World" (1997, Avon). Silver is the co-author of a forthcoming textbook on genetics, to be published by McGraw-Hill.
• "Imaging the Thinking Mind," by Jonathan D. Cohen. Professor Cohen, formerly of Carnegie-Mellon University, was appointed in April to the Department of Psychology at Princeton. A physician, Cohen received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and did his residency in psychiatry at Stanford. He is a co-author of the forthcoming "Methods in Cognitive Neuroscience." (Oxford)
• "Architectonics of the Mind," by Professor of Chemistry Clarence E. Schutt. His new terminology describes the astonishing new revelations of structural biology using architectural principles applied to cellular mechanisms of the mind.
• "Neurophilosophy of the Mind," by Patricia S. Churchland, professor of philosophy at the University of California at San Diego. She is the co-author of the forthcoming "On the Contrary," as well as "The Mind-Brain Continuum" (1996) and "The Computational Brain (1992), all MIT Press.
• "How the Brain Produces the Mind," by Professor of Molecular Biology John J. Hopfield. A leader in the area of biophysics, he is well-known for work in neural networks, with more than 170 scholarly articles involving the interaction of physics and biology.
• "Social Dimensions of the Human Mind," by Leslie A. Brothers, associate clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine. She is the author "Friday’s Footprints," (1997, Oxford) a metaphor for the sense of self-dependence on social cognition.
• "Sickness and Death of the Human Mind," by Dennis J. Selkoe, professor of neurology and neuroscience at Harvard Medical School. The co-director of the Center for Neurological Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, he heads a laboratory that is a world leader in the study of Alzheimer’s Disease.

  
  

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