Institute For Advanced Study Presents Day Of Public Lectures

The Institute for Advanced Study is presenting a day of public lectures on March 24, to be held in Wolfensohn Hall on the campus of the Institute.

The lectures are being offered as part of the Biennial Conference of the Association of Members of the Institute for Advanced Study (AMIAS), an organization of scholars who at some time during their academic career have spent from three months to three years pursuing research at the Institute.

Martin Nowak, head of the Institute's Program in Theoretical Biology, will speak at 10:00 a.m. on "Virus Dynamics." At Oxford University, he was Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow, Head of Mathematical Biology, and, most recently, Professor of Mathematical Biology. He came to the Institute for Advanced Study in 1998 to establish the Program in Theoretical Biology. His research interests are in infectious diseases, genomics, the evolution of language, and the evolution of fairness and cooperation. Dr. Nowak received his Ph.D. from the University of Vienna.

Economic theorist Eric Maskin, Albert O. Hirschman Professor in the School of Social Science, will speak at 11:00 a.m. on "Should Software Be Patented?" Professor Maskin has worked in many areas of economic theory, including game theory, the economics of incentives, and social choice theory. He joined the Institute faculty last year, after teaching at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and subsequently at Harvard University. His Ph.D. in applied mathematics is from Harvard University.

"The Pursuit of Unification: Fulfilling Einstein's Dream" is the title of the 2:00 p.m. talk by Nathan Seiberg, professor in the School of Natural Sciences. Seiberg, a theoretical physicist, is interested in field theory, particle physics phenomenology, and string theory. His recent work has been in the dynamics of supersymmetric field theories, obtaining results with applications in both physics and mathematics. A 1996 MacArthur Foundation fellow, Professor Seiberg received his Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute of Science. Before joining the Institute faculty in 1997, he taught at the Weizmann Institute and Rutgers University.

At 3:00 p.m., Patricia Crone, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the School of Historical Studies, will speak on "Post-Colonialism in Tenth- and Eleventh-Century Islam." A scholar of Islamic culture, Crone's most recent book is The Book of Strangers: Medieval Arabic Graffiti on the Theme of Nostalgia (with S. Moreh, 1999).

Professor Crone received her Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and subsequently held research and teaching positions at the universities of London, Oxford, and Cambridge. She was appointed to the faculty of the Institute for Advanced Study in 1997.

Moderating the day's events will be Melvyn Nathanson, professor of mathematics at the City University of New York, who is president of the Association of Members of the Institute for Advanced Study.

All four lectures are open to the public, with no advance reservation necessary. There will be a 9:15 a.m. coffee preceding the first lecture, and a 4:15 reception at day's end, both to be held in the Common Room of Fuld Hall.