He holds M.D., Ph.D (Biochemistry) degrees, and honorary degrees. He was Master of Balliol College, Oxford (1989-1994). His research includes epidemiology, virology, genetics, and anthropology. He was awarded the Nobel Prize (1976) for "discoveries concerning the mechanisms of the origin and dissemination of infectious diseases" and specifically, for the discovery of the Hepatitis B virus (HBV) and the hepatitis B vaccine. He was elected to the Inventors Hall of Fame for the invention of the vaccine. He has taught Anthropology and Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and has been a Visiting Professor at Bangalore, Singapore, Kentucky, Indiana, Otago, and Stanford.
Luca Cavalli-Sforza, M.D., Professor of Genetics Emeritus, Stanford University.
In his latest book Genes, People and Languages (North Point Press, 2000), Professor Cavalli-Sforza summarizes his pioneering work over the last few decades, providing an understanding of the past 100,000 years of human evolution through the historical record left behind in modern-day genes. His other books include The History and Geography of Human Genes (with Paolo Menozzi and Alberto Piazza; Princeton University press, 1993); The Great Human Diasporas: The History of Diversity and Evolution (Heather Mimnaugh, Editor; Perseus Publishing 1996); and Cultural Transmission and Evolution: A Quantitative Approach (with Marcus W. Feldman; Princeton University press, 1981).
Professor Cavalli-Sforza emphasizes an interdisciplinary approach to questions about human origins by integrating findings from cultural anthropology and linguistics with his own genetic studies. A native of Genoa, Dr. Cavalli-Sforza studied medicine at the University of Pavia. He practiced medicine for a few years before taking up an interest in genetics. In 1971 he joined the faculty of Stanford University as Professor of Genetics. He has held teaching positions at the University of Cambridge, University of Parma, and the University of Pavia. Dr. Cavalli-Sforza serves as the Director of the Human Genome Diversity Project and is also the principle investigator of the Human Population Genetics Laboratory at Stanford.
Anne Colby, Ph.D., Senior Scholar at the
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
Prior to joining the Carnegie Foundation in 1997, Dr. Colby was director of
the Henry Murray Research Center at Harvard University, a longitudinal studies
data archive and social science research center. She is principal author of
A Longitudinal Study of Moral Judgment (1983), The Measurement
of Moral Judgment (1987), Some Do Care: Contemporary Lives of Moral
Commitment (1992), and Educating Citizens: Preparing America's Undergraduates
for Lives of Moral and Civic Responsibility (2003). She is co-editor of
Ethnography and Human Development: Context and Meaning in Human Inquiry
(1995), Competence and Character Through Life (1998), and Looking
at Lives: American Longitudinal Studies of the Twentieth Century (2002).
She holds a B.A. from McGill University and a Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia
University.
Margaret Conkey, PhD, Class of 1960 Professor
of Anthropology, UC-Berkeley and Director, Archaeological Research Facility
Dr. Conkey joined the Berkeley Department of Anthropology in 1987. Since that
time, she has continued research and publication in several interrelated areas,
including: understanding the issues of gender and feminist perspectives in archaeology
and in past human societies; the interpretation and study of what is loosely
called "Paleolithic art"; and since 1993, a field research project,
which is primarily focused on understanding the possibilities for open air archaeological
evidence, especially of the late Paleolithic, in the French Mid-Pyrenees. The
field project is called "between the caves," since it is intended
to contextualize the rich archaeological evidence of art and material culture
found in the region's caves. Some of her publications include: The Uses
of Style in Archaeology (edited with Christine Hastorf, 1990); Engendering
Archaeology: Women and Prehistory (edited with Joan Gero, 1991); Beyond
Art: Pleistocene Image and Symbol (edited with Olga Soffer, et al, 1997).
William Damon is Professor of Education and Director of the Center on Adolescence at Stanford University.
He is also Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. Prior to coming to Stanford, Damon was University Professor and Director of the Center for the Study of Human Development at Brown University. Damon received his bachelor's degree from Harvard and his doctorate in developmental psychology from the University of California at Berkeley. Damon has written widely on moral commitment at all ages of human life. Damon's books include The Moral Child (1990); Some Do Care: Contemporary lives of moral commitment (1992); Greater Expectations: Overcoming the culture on indulgence in our homes and schools (1995); The Youth Charter: How communities can raise standards for all our children (1997); and Good Work: When Ethics and Excellence Meet (2001). Damon is editor-in-chief of New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development and editor of The Handbook of Child Psychology (1998).
Recently, Damon has been helping schools and communities build "youth charters" (shared standards and higher expectations) for adolescent moral development. In addition, Damon has been working with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on a large educational project seeking to foster good work in several key domains of American society. The domains include journalism, business, the sciences, higher education, and philanthropy. Damon has received awards and grants from many sources, including the Pew Charitable Trusts, the John Templeton Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the New York Community Trust, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Thrive Foundation. He has recently been elected to membership in the National Academy of Education.
Terrence Deacon, Ph.D., Professor of
Biological Anthropology, Boston University
Terrence Deacon is an Associate Professor who received his Ph.D. from Harvard
University in Biological Anthropology and is currently directing the expanding
biological anthropology component of the Boston University Anthropology curriculum.
He came to Boston in 1992 after teaching at Harvard for eight years. Professor
Deacon's research focuses on the evolution of the brain and he is best known
for his work on the evolution of the human language abilities. His new book
The Symbolic Species summarizes this research. He is currently involved
in neurobiological using cross–species transplantation of embryonic brain
tissue both to study evolutionary and developmental brain differences and to
develop new cell replacement therapies for brain damage. He teaches the general
introduction to Biological Anthropology as well as courses related to his particular
interests.
William Durham, Ph.D., Bing Professor of Human Biology, Stanford University
William Durham joined the Stanford faculty in 1977 and has just completed a term as Chair of the Department of Anthropological Sciences. Professor Durham's main research interests are in ecology and evolution, the interaction of genetic and cultural change in human populations, and the challenges to conservation and community development in the Third World. His field studies among the San Blas Kuna of Panama have involved investigation of demography, genetics, and resource management. He has also researched the causes of land scarcity and environmental degradation in rural El Salvador and Honduras and the social forces behind deforestation in Mexico and Central and South America. Professor Durham's publications include Scarcity and Survival in Centeral America (Stanford Press, 1979); Coevolution: Genes, Culture, and Human Diversity (1991); and The Social Causes of Environmental Destruction in Latin America (with M. Painter, Michigan, 1995). During his tenure at Stanford, Dr. Durham has received the Gores, Dinkelspeil, ASSU, Rhodes, and Bing Fellow Awards for his teaching. His work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, H. F. Guggenheim Foundation, Danforth Foundation, and MacArthur Foundation. Dr. Durham was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences from 1989 to 1990. He served as the Director of the Human Biology Program at Stanford from 1992 through 1995, and he is currently editor of the Annual Review of Anthropology. Professor Durham earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
Arnold Eisen, Ph.D., Professor of Religious Studies, Stanford University.
In his most recent book, The Jew Within: Self, Family, and Community in America (Indiana University Press, 2000; co-authored with Steven Cohen), Professor Eisen explores how American Jews understand and live out their Judaism. This is a part of his larger research program centering around questions of how Judaism has changed through its interaction with Western society.
With numerous publications including Taking Hold of Torah: Jewish Commitment and Community in America (Indiana University Press, 1999) and The Chosen People in America: A Study in Jewish Religious Ideology (Indiana University Press, 1995), Dr. Eisen has become one of the leading scholars on the subject of Judaism in America. He recently received the Koret Jewish Book Award for his work Rethinking Modern Judaism: Ritual, Commandment, Community (University of Chicago Press, 1999).
Paul Ekman, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, University of California, San Francisco.
Widely known for his popular book Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage (Norton, 1992), Professor Ekman is a world-renowned expert in emotional research and nonverbal communication, particularly for his studies on emotional expression and the corresponding physiological activity of the face. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, and he has also organized an NSF workshop, "Understanding the Face." Dr. Ekman's distinguished lecturing has included a 1992 keynote address to the Japanese Congress of Psychology. Professor Ekman is responsible for editing the new edition of Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (Oxford 1998), to which he also contributed an important introduction. His other books include The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions (with R. Davidson, Oxford 1994) and What the Face Reveals: Basic and Applied Studies of Spontaneous Expression Using the Facial Action Coding System (with E. L. Rosenberg, Oxford 1998).
Marcus Feldman, Ph.D., Burnet C. and Mildred Finley Wohlford Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and Professor of Biological Sciences, Stanford University.
Professor Feldman received his doctorate from Stanford, where he currently leads a major research program in population biology. Using mathematical and computer modeling, Dr. Feldman's research group simulates the process of evolution, an approach that allows new insight into such phenomena as the interaction of biological and cultural evolution, the evolution of learning, and the potential place of natural selection and recombination in the evolution of complex genetic systems. He has received many honors, including being named a Guggenheim Fellow in 1976 for his outstanding research and a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Studies in the Biological Sciences 1983-1984.
In addition to his many scientific papers, Professor Feldman has written a number of books, including Mathematical Evolutionary Theory (Princeton 1989) and Cultural Transmission and Evolution: A Quantitative Approach (with L. Cavalli-Sforza, Princeton 1981). Dr. Feldman is the managing editor of Theoretical Population Biology and a member of the board of trustees at the Santa Fe Institute.
John Gabrieli, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychology, Stanford University.
Professor Gabrieli is a specialist on the brain in memory, language, and thought, particularly how changes in brain functions underlie the growth of mental abilities in children and the decline of some abilities in normal aging. Through a comparison of typical brain functioning in children and older adults with that of individuals who suffer from some form of neurological impairment (ADHD, dyslexia, epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease), Professor Gabrieli is able to examine the development of mental abilities. He is the author of numerous papers reporting his research, such as a recent piece in the Journal of Neurosciences, "Semantic Encoding and Retrieval in the Left Inferior Prefrontal Cortex: A Functional MRI Study of Task Difficulty and Process Specificity" and an article in Brain, "Functional MRI Measurement of Language Lateralization in Wada-Tested Patients."
In addition, Professor Gabrieli received the American Psychological Association's Robert A. and Phyllis Levitt Early Career Award in Neuroscience in 1996. Dr. Gabrieli studied English at Yale before going on to earn a Ph.D. in Behavioral Neuroscience from MIT in 1987.
René Girard, Ph.D., Andrew B. Hammond Professor of French Language, Literature, and Civilization Emeritus, Stanford University.
Professor Girard has inspired scholars from many fields through his theories of human desire and of the significance of violence and religion in the formation of human culture. Although these ideas grew out of his interest in French literature, they have been recognized for their far-reaching implications, with his "mimetic theory of desire" perhaps among the most widely discussed. Professor Girard's many influential books include Violence and the Sacred (John Hopkins Press, 1977); The Scapegoat (John Hopkins Press, 1986); and Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (Stanford University Press, 1987).
Born in Avignon, Professor Girard studied archival sciences at the Ecole Nationale de Chartes before moving to the U.S. and receiving his Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1950. He has taught at many colleges and universities, including Indiana, Duke, Bryn Mawr, Buffalo, and Johns Hopkins. In 1981, he was appointed Professor of French Language, Literature, and Civilization at Stanford, where he later held the title of Hammond Professor of Romance Languages until his recent retirement. His work was central to the creation of the field of generative anthropology, as well as the inspiration for the formation of the international Colloquium on Violence and Religion (COV&R).
Robert Hamerton-Kelly, Th.D., Pastor, Woodside Village Church.
Dr. Hamerton-Kelley is currently a member of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion. A native of South Africa, he studied at Cambridge University before going on to receive his Th.D. from Union Theological Seminary in New York. Dr. Hamerton-Kelly held several teaching positions, including Professor of Religious Studies at Claremont College, Professor of New Testament Studies at McCormick Seminary (Chicago), and Consulting Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University before moving into full-time ministry at Woodside Village Church. From 1986 to 1997, Dr. Hamerton-Kelly served as the Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford, where his research specialties included the ethics of nuclear weapons and of military intervention, with special attention to ethnic conflicts in Central Europe. During this time, he traveled extensively to Europe and was chiefly interested in the psychosocial elements of ethnic conflict, including the issues of vengeance, envy, resentment, and scapegoating, as well as the part that religion plays in these issues. He has worked closely with Stanford colleague Rene Girard on this issue of religion's role in cultural violence.
Dr. Hamerton-Kelly has authored several books, including Sacred Violence: Paul's Hermeneutic of the Cross (Fortress 1992); The Gospel and The Sacred: The Poetics of Violence in Mark (Fortress 1994); and Violent Origins: Walter Burkert, Rene Girard, and Jonathan Z. Smith on Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation (Stanford 1988). Since retiring from academics in 1997, Dr. Hamerton-Kelly has devoted his attention to the study of the Greek Fathers of the Christian Church and to writing sermons. He is a member of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion.
John F. Haught, Ph.D., Thomas Healey Distinguished Professor, Georgetown University
John F. Haught, Ph.D. is a theologian well known for his teaching and writing in the area of science and religion. Dr. Haught has been a member of the theology faculty at Georgetown University for the past thirty-five years. In a 1999 study, God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution, he argued that while a purposeful universe would have to possess at least a loosely directional aim, purpose is “"a much wider notion than design."” Dr. Haught claims the debate between evolutionists and creationists is fundamentally misdirected because both competing ideologies lack an adequate discussion of novelty, which he sees as a necessary component of evolution and a central theme in theological understanding of divine creativity. In his view, Darwin's vision of life, instead of being hostile to religion —- as scientific skeptics and many believers have thought it to be —- actually provides a fertile setting for mature reflection on ideas about God and cosmic meaning. Dr. Haught extends his discussion of evolutionary theism in his latest book, Deeper Than Darwin: The Prospect for Religion in the Age of Evolution, which was published last year by Westview Press. In the unfinished nature of the universe and its evolution into a “"stupendous array of beauty,"” he finds support for his belief that the cosmos has some overall point and human beings a basis for hope. A graduate of St. Mary's University in Baltimore, Dr. Haught earned his Ph.D. in theology at The Catholic University of America in 1970. He formerly served as chair of the Georgetown Theology Department and is the founding director of its Center for the Study of Science and Religion. A recipient of the Owen Garrigan Award in Science and Religion given by Seton Hall University and of the Sophia Award of the Washington Theological Union, Dr. Haught is a member of the board of advisors of the John Templeton Foundation. He has published more than fifty articles and essays in collected volumes and is the editor of Science and Religion in Quest of Cosmic Purpose (2000). He is the author of eleven books, including The Promise of Nature: Ecology and Cosmic Purpose (1993) and Science and Religion: From Conflict to Conservation (1995).
William B. Hurlbut, M.D., Physician and Consulting Professor in the Program in Human Biology, Stanford University
Born in St. Helena, California, he grew up in Bronxville, New York. After receiving his undergraduate and medical training at Stanford University, he completed postdoctoral studies in theology and medical ethics, studying with Robert Hamerton-Kelly, the Dean of the Chapel of Stanford, and subsequently with the Rev. Louis Bouyer of the Institut Catholique de Paris. His primary areas of interest involve the ethical issues associated with advancing biomedical technology, the biological basis of moral awareness, and studies in the integration of theology and philosophy of biology. His courses in biomedical ethics in the Program in Human Biology include: "Adam 2000: Images of Human Life in the Age of Biomedical Technology" and "Ethical Issues in the Neurosciences." He has also taught a course on genetics and human origins with Dr. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Director of the Human Genome Diversity Project and a course on epidemics, evolution and ethics with Dr. Baruch Blumberg who received the Nobel Prize for discovery of the Hepatitis B Virus. Since 1998, he has been a member of the Chemical and Biological Warfare working group at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and has worked with NASA on projects in astrobiology. In 2001 he was appointed by President George W. Bush to the President's Council on Bioethics.
George Lakoff, Ph.D., Professor of Linguistics,
University of California, Berkeley
Professor Lakoff's research centers on how people think and the ways in which
thought is reflected in language. He has been working in this area since 1963,
and ahs been a founder of three intellectual movements in linguistics: generative
semantics in the 1960s, cognitive linguistics in the 1970s, and the neural theory
of language in the 1990s. He is best known for his research on metaphorical
thought and for his popular book, Metaphors We Live By (with Mark Johnson).
Professor Lakoff has applied his research on the nature of thought and language
not only to politics, but also to psychology, philosophy, poetics, and mathematics.
His books in those areas include: Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things;
More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor (with Mark
Turner); Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to
Western Thought (with Mark Johnson); and Where Mathematics Comes From:
How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics Into Being (with Rafael E. Nunez),
which has been a national bestseller.
Since the late 1980s, he has been working with Jerome Feldman on a neural theory
of thought and language, trying to answer the question of how the physical brain
can give rise to thought and language via mechanisms of neural computation.
They are now working on a book, From Molecules to Metaphor: The Neural Theory
of Language, which lays out a neural theory of language in precise detail.
In 2001, Professor Lakoff gave the Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology at the
University of Glasgow (now in press), in which he analyzed in detail the metaphors
used in constituting our understanding of morality and the various conceptualizations
of God.
William L. McLennan, Jr., Dean of Religious Life, Stanford University.
William (Scotty) McLennan has been the Dean for Religious Life at Stanford University since January, 2001. He was the University Chaplain at Tufts University from 1984-2000 and Senior Lecturer (part-time) at the Harvard Business School for most of the years from 1988-2000. His duties at Stanford include providing spiritual, moral, and ethical leadership for the university as a whole, teaching, encouraging a wide spectrum of religious traditions on campus, serving as the minister of Memorial Church, and engaging in public service
McLennan received a B.A. from Yale University in 1970 as a Scholar of the House working in the area of computers and the mind (Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa). He received M.Div. and J.D. degrees from Harvard Divinity and Law Schools in 1975 (Cum Laude). In 1975 he was ordained to the ministry (Unitarian Universalist) and admitted to the Massachusetts bar as an attorney.
McLennan is the author of Finding Your Religion: When the Faith You Grew Up With Has Lost Its Meaning (HarperSanFrancisco, 1999) and co-author with Laura Nash of Church on Sunday, Work on Monday: The Challenge of Fusing Christian Values With Business Life (Jossey-Bass, 2001).
William C. Mobley, M.D., Ph.D., Chair, Department of Neurology, Stanford University.
Professor Mobley has taught at the University of California, San Francisco and the San Francisco School of Medicine and has served as chair of the Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at the Stanford University Medical School since 1997. Dr. Mobley earned a joint M.D./ Ph.D. at Stanford and held a fellowship in neurology at Johns Hopkins University. His research interests include the study of neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.
Dr. Mobley has written many articles reporting his research, including a recent piece in Experimental Neurology "Evidence for Normal Aging of the Septohippocampal Cholinergic System in ApoE (-1-) Mice but Impaired Clearance of Axonal Degeneration Products Following Injury," and a report in the Cold Spring Harbor Symposia--Quantitative Biology (LXI) , "A Signalling Endosome Hypothesis to Explain NGF Actions: Potential Implications for Neurodegeneration." Dr. Mobley has received numerous honors and awards. He has served on several prominent advisory boards to review grant proposals for the March of Dimes, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders Association.
Simon Conway Morris, Ph.D., Professor of Evolutionary Paleobiology, University of Cambridge
Simon Conway Morris, Ph.D. is widely acknowledged as one of the foremost paleontologists of his time. He has devoted his research to the study of the 520-million-year-old Burgess Shale, found between two peaks in the Canadian Rockies, and related fossil-rich formations. In his acclaimed 1998 study, The Crucible of Creation, he re-interpreted the soft-body fauna found in fissile rock as evincing the preeminent role of convergence in evolution. In his most recent book, Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), he extends his argument and builds his case for the inevitability of numerous evolutionary outcomes on a foundation laid by Charles Darwin himself in Origin of the Species, the epochal work to which critics have compared Life's Solution. A graduate of the University of Bristol, where he took first-class honors in geology, Dr. Conway Morris went on to Cambridge and studied at Churchill College with Harry Whittington, the first re-interpreter of the Burgess Shale, on a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Studentship. He was elected a research fellow of St. John's College in 1975 and received his Ph.D. in evolutionary paleobiology the next year. Appointed a lecturer in earth sciences at The Open University in 1979, he returned to Cambridge as a lecturer four years later and was promoted to his current chair in 1995. Dr. Conway Morris is a fellow of The Royal Society and serves on the board of advisors of the John Templeton Foundation. His work has been supported by research grants from the Society as well as from the Nuffield Foundation, the Carlsberg Foundation, the NERC, the National Geographic Society, and the Leverhulme Foundation. He has delivered numerous invited lectures throughout the United Kingdom, Europe, Asia, Canada, and the United States. He contributes frequently to general magazines and encyclopedias and to radio and television programs on science. The author of some ninety research papers, Dr. Conway Morris has served as editor of five books.
Norman M. Naimark, Ph.D., Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of East European Studies, Stanford University
Norman M. Naimark is also Senior Fellow of the Stanford Institute of International Studies and the Hoover Institution. Dr. Naimark has served as Director of Stanford's Center for Russian and East European Studies as well as Chair of Stanford's History Department. Presently, he directs Stanford's Programs in International Relations and International Policy Studies. Dr. Naimark's early scholarship focused on the problems of radical politics in the Russian Empire. In this connection he wrote a book on Polish Marxism and one on Russian terrorism. More recently he has written books on the Soviet occupation of Germany (The Russians in Germany, Harvard, 1995) and on ethnic cleansing in twentieth-century Europe (Fires of Hatred, Harvard, 2001). Presently he is working on two larger projects on Soviet policy in Europe after World War II and on mass killing in the twentieth century.
Bill Newsome, Ph.D., Professor of Neurobiology,
Stanford University
Bill Newsome received a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from Stetson University
in DeLand, Florida, and a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from the California Institute
of Technology in 1980.
He did postdoctoral research at the National Eye Institute, and then served for four years as an Assistant Professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He moved to the Stanford University School of Medicine in 1988 where he is currently Professor of Neurobiology.
Dr. Newsome is an international leader in the fields of systems and cognitive neuroscience. He has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of neural systems in the primate brain that mediate visual perception, and is currently exploring cortical mechanisms that underlie simple decision processes. The high quality of his research has been recognized by several awards and prestigious lectureships, including the Rank Prize for Optoelectronics in 1992, the Spencer Award for Highly Original Contributions to Neurobiology in 1994, and the 13th Annual David Marr Lecture at Cambrige University in 1996. In 1997, he was appointed as an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and in 2000 he was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences.
Andrea Nightingale, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at Stanford University.
She holds BA degress from Stanford and Magdalen College, Oxford and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. In her most recent book, Genres in Dialogue: Plato and the Construct of Philosophy, she investigates how Plato 'invented' the discipline of philosophy. In order to define and legitimise philosophy, Dr Nightingale maintains, Plato had to match it against genres of discourse that had authority and currency in democratic Athens. By incorporating traditional genres of poetry and rhetoric into his dialogues, she argues that Plato marks the boundaries of philosophy as a discursive and as a social practice.
V.S. Ramachandran, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Neuroscience, University of California, San Diego.
Professor Ramachandran is also Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego, as well as Adjunct Professor of Biology at the Salk Institute. Originally trained as a physician, Dr. Ramachandran received his M.D. from Stanley Medical College before earning a Ph.D. in neurophysiology from Trinity College, Cambridge.
Dr. Ramachandran is widely known for his work on human visual perception. Through his perception research, he has identified several visual illusions, including motion capture and stereoscopic capture. Professor Ramachandran may be best known for his more recent research in neurology, including his work on the phenomenon of "phantom limbs." His awards include election as a Fellow of All Saints College, Oxford; the John F. Streff Gold Medal from the Neurological Rehabilitation Society of America; and the Ariens Kappers Medal of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences for distinguished contributions in neuroscience. In 1995, he gave the "Decade of the Brain Lecture" at the 25th annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. More recently, he gave the "Dorcas Cumming Plenary Lecture" at Cold Springs Harbor and the first "Hans Lucas Teuber Lecture" at MIT. Professor Ramachandran is the author of more than 120 scientific papers and is editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Human Behavior. Dr. Ramachandran is also the author of the critically acclaimed Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind (Harper 1999). In 1999, Newsweek named him a member of "the century club-one of the hundred most prominent people to watch in the next century.
Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D., Professor of Biological Sciences, Stanford University.
Dr. Sapolsky, a neuroendocrinologist, has focused his research on issues of stress and neuron degeneration, as well as on the possibilities of gene therapy strategies for help in protecting susceptible neurons from disease. In his well-known book Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: An Updated Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases and Coping (Freeman 1994), for example, Professor Sapolsky examines how prolonged stress can cause or contribute to damaging physical and mental afflictions. His lab was among the first to document that stress can damage the neurons of the hippocampus. He is currently working on gene transfer techniques to strengthen neurons against the disabling effects of glucocorticoids.
Professor Sapolsky has received numerous honors and awards for his work, including the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and the Klingenstein Fellowship in Neuroscience. He received the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award and the Young Investigator of the Year Awards from the Society for Neuroscience, the Biological Psychiatry Society, and the International Society for Psychoneuro-Endocrinology.
Dr. Sapolsky is also the author of more than 250 scientific articles and several books, including The Trouble with Testosterone and Other Essays on the Biology of the Human Predicament (Simon & Schuster 1997) and Stress, the Aging Brain, and the Mechanisms of Neuron Death (MIT 1992). His latest book, A Primate's Memoir, is expected in 2001. He is on the editorial boards of several journals, including the Journal of Neuroscience, Psychoneuroendocrinology, and Stress and is a contributing editor for The Sciences.
Jeffrey Schloss, Ph.D., Professor of Biology, Westmont College.
Professor Schloss received undergraduate training in philosophy and biology and received a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from Washington University in 1983. He has taught at the University of Michigan, Wheaton College, and the Jaguar Creek Rainforest Research Station. Dr. Schloss serves at the Director of Biological Programs for the Christian Environmental Association and as a science consultant for the Christian College Coalition Faculty Development Program in Faith & Learning.
Dr. Schloss has been a Danforth Fellow, an AAAS Fellow in Science and Communication, and a Fellow of the Discovery Institute. His research interests include the social impact and theological implications of biological theory. He also studies evolutionary theories of human moral behavior and the conflicts and congruencies between such theories and traditional religious explanation.
David Spiegel, M.D. is Professor and Associate Chair of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Director of the Psychosocial Treatment Laboratory, and Medical Director of the Complementary Medicine Clinic at Stanford University School of Medicine, where he has been a member of the academic faculty since 1975.
He is a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, the American College of Psychiatrists, and is Past President of the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. He has published six books and more than 300 journal articles and chapters on psychosocial oncology, hypnosis, post-traumatic stress, and psychotherapy. He is the first to scientifically demonstrate, in a randomized prospective trial, that group support results in significantly enhanced survival time for cancer patients. His research is supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Cancer Institute, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Fetzer Institute, and the Nathan S. Cummings Foundation, among others. He is winner of the 1995 Edward A. Strecker Award for significant contributions to clinical psychiatry in the United States, and was the Burroughs Wellcome Visiting Professor to the Royal Society of Medicine in the United Kingdom in 1997. His research on cancer patients has been featured in Bill Moyers' Emmy award-winning special PBS series, Healing and the Mind.
David Sloane Wilson, Ph.D., Professor,
Departments of Biology and Anthropology, Binghamton University
Dr. Wilson is an evolutionary biologist with a wide range of interests, including
natural selection as a hierarchical process, the nature of intraspecific variation,
the evolution of ecological communities and human evolutionary biology. He is
the author of dozens of scientific papers and the following books: The Natural
Selection of Populations and Communities (1980), Unto Others: The Evolution
and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior (with E. Sober, 1998), and Darwin's
Cathedral: Evolution, Religion and the Nature of Society (2002).
Lee Yearly, Ph.D. is Chairman of the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University, where he has taught for twenty years.
His specialty is comparative religious ethics, especially varying conceptions of the self and the good life, as they appear in the classical Greek, Christian, Confucian, and Taoist traditions. He received his bachelors degree from Haverford College and his Ph.D. from the divinity school at the University of Chicago. Dr. Yearly was the Henry Luce Professor of Comparative Religious Ethics at Amherst College in 1987-88 and a Luce Fellow at the Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion at the University of Chicago in 1990-91. His most recent book is Aquinas and Mencius: Theories of Virtue and Conceptions of Courage.