<html><head><style type='text/css'>p { margin: 0; }</style></head><body><div style='font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: #000099'><b>From: </b>"Jennifer Gaines" <jgaines@clamsnet.org><b></b><br><br>
<p class="MsoNormal">Event: Talk about “Modern” Science by Seymour Cohen</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Where: Woods Hole Public Library</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Date/Time: Monday, July 23, 12:30 PM</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Free and open to the public</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Dr. Seymour Cohen, retired biochemist, bacteriologist, <span style=""> </span>and virologist, will speak at the Woods Hole
Public Library on Monday, July 23 at 12:30 PM about a recent controversy among
scientific historians. His talk will focus on the work of Charles
Gillispie,<span style=""> </span>Professor Emeritus of the
history of science at Princeton
University and editor of
the <i style="">Dictionary of Scientific Biology</i>,
and Joel Mokyr, former President of<span style=""> </span>the
Society of Economic Historians.<span style=""> </span>These
two major figures in the history of science and industrial history in America today
have widely divergent opinions about the evolution of the modern industrial
age. Dr. Cohen will address their differences and the problems in their
interpretations of “modern” science.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To quote Princeton University, which just awarded Dr. Gillispie an
Honorary Doctorate of<span style=""> </span>Human Letters: “Charles
Gillispie, a recognized expert in scientific technological activity in
18th-century France,
established Princeton's <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/hos/" target="_blank">Program in History of
Science</a> and served as director for ten years. He also served as <span style=""> </span>chair of the Department of History in the
1970’s. With his colleague Thomas Kuhn, he gave impetus to the founding of the
field of history and philosophy of science as an academic discipline. He was
editor-in-chief of the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, a 16-volume landmark
series that won an award from the American Library Association<span style=""> </span>as an outstanding reference work. <br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br></p>
<p>Joel Mokyr,<span style=""> </span>professor of economics at
Northwestern University
works on the economic history of Europe, and
specializes in the period 1750- 1914. He teaches classes in European and
American economic history and is currently head of his department. He holds a
PhD from Yale University in 1974, and received a
Guggenheim fellowship in 1980. <span style=""> </span>Hs
current research concerns the economic and intellectual roots of technological
progress and the growth of useful knowledge in European societies, as well as
the impact that industrialization and economic progress have had on economic
welfare. He is a Fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and
Sciences, and of the Econometric Society. He has been the President of the
Economic History Association, and a co-editor of the Journal of Economic
History.</p><p><br></p>
<p>Dr. Cohen is<span style=""> </span>himself an esteemed and
life-long scientist, having been on the staff at Columbia
University, the University
of Pennsylvania, the University of Colorado
in Denver and
the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He worked primarily on viruses
and metabolic pathways. The discovery that virus infection creates new
metabolic pathways and affects flux through existing pathways is important
because it suggests that virus-specified enzymes could be used as biochemical
targets for antiviral agents. <br></p><p><br></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">He currently is working in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where
he published texts on polyamines and is working on a biography of the chemist,
Thomas Cooper. He has spoken at the Library on other aspects of the history of
science; this talk will be an extension of those previous lectures.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This event will be held in the lower level meeting room of
the Woods Hole Public Library and is free and open to the public. For more
information, call the Library at 508-548-8961 or check the website at
<a href="http://www.woodsholepubliclibrary.org" target="_blank">www.woodsholepubliclibrary.org</a>.</p>
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