[act-ma] 4/7 (Wed) Lisa Randall and Marcia Bartusiak at Cambridge Forum

[Cambridge Forum]

Cambridge Forum
3 Church Street ● Cambridge, MA 02138
617-495-2727
email: director at cambridgeforum.org
www.cambridgeforum.org

Release							  April 1, 2010
				
Criticizing Creativity
 
Wednesday, April 7,2010 at  6:30 pm

FREE and Open to the Public

Science journalist Marcia Bartusiak and physicist Lisa Randall explore the creativity involved in  scientific research and writing about science  at Cambridge Forum.  The free program takes place at The First Parish (Unitarian Universalist) in Cambridge, 3 Church Street, (Harvard Square) at 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 7, 2010.	

Creativity is a trait commonly associated with artists--writers, painters, or composers.  But other professions require creativity as well; think of the doctor coming up with a diagnosis, the teacher creating a new lesson plan, or the scientist confronted with aberrations in data.  How is the creative spark that informs a scientific investigation the same as the inspiration that generates a work of art or literature?  How is it different?   What can we learn about the nature of creativity when we examine the ways in which it is used outside of the arts? 

MIT’s Marcia Bartusiask and Harvard’s Lisa Randall each have experience in scientific research and in the arts.  They bring this dual perspective to the discussion led by Dr. Sasha Helper.  ashas indicated that she will talk about her career in science and then journalism and then particularly watching science evolve and then writing about science in historical context.I will send lisa some thoughts about how the conversation might fly and see if she answers- if not at least she will have a heads up about possible topics.

Lisa Randall is the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University.  A physicist, she focuses on particle physics and cosmology, examining elementary particles and fundamental forces.  Her research on extra dimensions of space has advanced the scientific community’s understanding and testing the Standard Model of particle physics, supersymmetry, models of extra dimensions, resolutions to the hierarchy problem concerning the weakness of gravity and experimental tests of these ideas, cosmology of extra dimensions, baryogenesis, cosmological inflation, and dark matter. Professor Randall’s ground-breaking work has been honored with numerous international awards; in 2004, she was the most cited theoretical physicist of the previous five years.  She has also been a pioneer in communicating her highly scientific work to the general public.  Listed by Esquire, Time, Rolling Stone, Newsweek, and Seed magazines as one of the most influential people of the millennial decade, she has been honored with the 2006 Klopsted Award from the American Society of Physics Teachers and the 2007 Julius Lilienfeld Prize from the American Physical Society for her work on elementary particle physics and cosmology and for communicating this work to the public.  Her book Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions was included in the New York Times' 100 notable books of 2005.

Marcia Bartusiak is currently an Adjunct Professor with the Graduate Program in Science Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a columnist for Natural History magazine.  With a master’s degree in physics, she conducted research on the effects of radiation on materials sent into space as parts of orbiting astronomical observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Ultraviolet Explorer. After beginning her career as a science writer as an intern at Science News and then as a charter member of Discover's writing staff, she continues to write about astronomy and physics in a variety of national publications, including National Geographic, Astronomy, Sky & Telescope, Natural History, Science, and Technology Review, among others. She is the author of 5 books. Thursday's Universe, a layman's guide to the frontiers of astrophysics and cosmology, Through a Universe Darkly, a history of astronomers' centuries-long quest to discover the universe's composition, and Einstein's Unfinished Symphony, about the on-going attempt to detect gravity waves, were named notable science books by The New York Times. She also co-authored A Positron Named Priscilla, a National Academy of Sciences book on cutting-edge science. Her latest books are Archives of the Universe and The Day We Found the Universe, a narrative saga of the birth of modern cosmology. 

Sasha Helper, M.D., a child psychiatrist and columnist for Psychiatric Times, a professional journal.

This program is funded in part by a grant from the Cambridge Cultural Council and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.  A book-signing, courtesy of Harvard Book Store, follows the forum.

Cambridge Forum is taped and edited for public radio broadcast.  Edited CDs are available to the public by contacting 617-495-2727.   Select forums can be viewed in their entirety on demand by visiting our website at www.cambridgeforum.org and clicking on the WGBH Forum Network.

Cambridge Forum
3 Church Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone:  617-495-2727
email:  mailto:director at cambridgeforum.org
website:  http://www.cambridgeforum.org

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