University of Maryland Distinguished Lecture Series (2000-2001)

Note: Everyone is welcome to attend any of these lectures. No tickets are necessary.

Prof. Christoph Wolff
William Powell Mason Professor of Music, and
Curator of the Isham Memorial Library
Harvard University
“Bach's Music and Newtonian Science: A Composer in Search of the Foundation of his Art” Monday, 13 November 2000
4:00 PM
Rm. 200 Skinner

Prof. Kip S. Thorne
Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics
California Institute of Technology
“Gravitational Waves: A New Window onto the Universe” Wednesday, 6 December 2000
4:00 PM
Rm. 1412 Physics Lecture Hall

Prof. Gerald M. Rubin
Professor of Genetics and Development
University of California, Berkeley, and
Vice President for Biomedical Research
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
“Sequencing and Comparing Genomes: Now that we know the DNA sequence, what do we know?” Wednesday, 25 April 2001
4:00 PM
Rm. 1412 Physics Lecture Hall

Directions to the University of Maryland and Parking Information:
http://www.inform.umd.edu/CampusInfo/Departments/guest/visitorcenter/directions/
Map of the University of Maryland:
http://www.inform.umd.edu/CampusInfo/About_UMCP/Maps/

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Christoph Wolff
William Powell Mason Professor of Music
Harvard University

Professor Wolff has written extensively on the history of music from the 15th to the 20th centuries. He is responsible for one of the major highlights in the celebration of the Bach-year. His Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (2000) is to date the most complete biography of Bach. He emphasizes Bach's role as musical equivalent to Isaac Newton's striving as a physicist in the era of exploration between the 17th and the 18th century. Wolff was also part of the team that last year solved one of the great mysteries in Bach studies since World War II: the whereabouts of the musical estate of C. P. E. Bach, a collection that was housed at the Sing-Akademie in Berlin until it was lost, and which was known to comprise some 500 scores composed by members of the Bach family, and unpublished works by Carl Heinrich, Georg Philipp Telemann, J. Adolph Hasse, and other important composers of the time.

Professor Wolff is a Recipient of the Dent Medal of the Royal Musical Association in London and the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award. He was the Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Arts from 1992 to 2000, after teaching at several renowned universities in the US and abroad. He is in the board of editors of the New Bach Edition, co-editor of the Bach-Jahrbuch, President of the Central Institute for Mozart Research in Salzburg, and since 1982 an official member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his recent books are Bach: Essays on His Life and Music (1991), Mozart's Requiem (1994), The World of the Bach Cantatas (1996), and The New Bach Reader: A Life of J. S. Bach in Letters and Documents (1998).

Kip S. Thorne
Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics
California Institute of Technology

Kip Thorne has been mentor and thesis advisor for about 40 Ph.D. physicists, who have gone on to become world leaders in their fields. He co-authored Gravitation (1973), from which most of the present generation of scientists have learned general relativity, and Black Holes: The Membrane Paradigm (1986). He is also the author of Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy (1994). He laid the foundations for the theory of pulsations of relativistic stars and the gravitational waves they emit. In addition, he is a co-founder of the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) Project. “Colliding black holes, spinning neutron stars, and the Big-Bang should all produce strong gravitational waves, and those waves should carry detailed information about their sources. Do the laws of physics permit space and time to be multiply connected -- can there be traversible wormholes and `time machines'?”

Dr. Thorne is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. He has won many prizes including the Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society, the Karl Schwarzschild Medal of the German Astronomical Society and the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award. He has served on the International Committee on General Relativity and Gravitation and the National Academy of Science's Space Science Board, which has advised NASA and Congress on space science policy.

Gerald M. Rubin
Professor of Genetics and Development
University of California, Berkeley, and
Vice President for Biomedical Research
Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Gerald Rubin is the director of the Drosophila Genome Center in Berkeley, California. Research in his laboratory is directed towards studies of the structure and function of the genome of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. He is developing the biological and computer-based tools needed to analyze and display the vast amount of information being derived from the sequencing of this genome. He is using these tools to address issues in genome organization and function, development, and evolution. He is also continuing his long-standing efforts to use large-scale genetic screens to elucidate gene-regulatory and signal transduction pathways.

Dr. Rubin is currently Professor of Genetics and Development at UC Berkeley, and Vice President for Biomedical Research at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Many of the proteins he has studied have proven important components of diseases such as cancer and neural degeneration. In addition, he has trained a new generation of researchers who continue this pioneering work. He is co-founder of Exilixis, Inc., a company pioneering the use of genetically manipulable model systems for biomedical research, and for the past two years he has collaborated with Celera Genomics to use their whole-genome shotgun sequencing strategy on the Drosophila genome. Dr. Rubin has received numerous honors, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the Academy of Arts and Sciences.

For more information, contact Acrisio Pires at (301) 405-4936
or (301) 887-9368, or email him at pires@wam.umd.edu
Webpage design by Tim Ng

View the 1999-2000 Graduate School Distinguished Lecturers
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Visit the University of Maryland Chapter of Sigma Xi home page

Prof. Christoph Wolff William Powell Mason Professor of Music, and Curator of the Isham Memorial Library Harvard University	*“Bach's Music and Newtonian Science: A Composer in Search of the Foundation of his Art”*	Monday, 13 November 2000 4:00 PM Rm. 200 Skinner
Prof. Kip S. Thorne Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics California Institute of Technology	*“Gravitational Waves: A New Window onto the Universe”*	Wednesday, 6 December 2000 4:00 PM Rm. 1412 Physics Lecture Hall
Prof. Gerald M. Rubin Professor of Genetics and Development University of California, Berkeley, and Vice President for Biomedical Research Howard Hughes Medical Institute	*“Sequencing and Comparing Genomes: Now that we know the DNA sequence, what do we know?”*	Wednesday, 25 April 2001 4:00 PM Rm. 1412 Physics Lecture Hall
Directions to the University of Maryland and Parking Information: http://www.inform.umd.edu/CampusInfo/Departments/guest/visitorcenter/directions/ Map of the University of Maryland: http://www.inform.umd.edu/CampusInfo/About_UMCP/Maps/
Note: We have set up an automated email list for individuals to receive updated information about the Graduate School's Distinguished Lecturer Series. Here are the steps to subscribe and unsubscribe to the list. To subscribe: Send a message to majordomo@majordomo.umd.edu The text should be *“subscribe disting_lec”* To unsubscribe: Send a message to majordomo@majordomo.umd.edu The text should be *“unsubscribe disting_lec”*

Christoph Wolff William Powell Mason Professor of Music Harvard University
Professor Wolff has written extensively on the history of music from the 15th to the 20th centuries. He is responsible for one of the major highlights in the celebration of the Bach-year. His Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (2000) is to date the most complete biography of Bach. He emphasizes Bach's role as musical equivalent to Isaac Newton's striving as a physicist in the era of exploration between the 17th and the 18th century. Wolff was also part of the team that last year solved one of the great mysteries in Bach studies since World War II: the whereabouts of the musical estate of C. P. E. Bach, a collection that was housed at the Sing-Akademie in Berlin until it was lost, and which was known to comprise some 500 scores composed by members of the Bach family, and unpublished works by Carl Heinrich, Georg Philipp Telemann, J. Adolph Hasse, and other important composers of the time.
Professor Wolff is a Recipient of the Dent Medal of the Royal Musical Association in London and the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award. He was the Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Arts from 1992 to 2000, after teaching at several renowned universities in the US and abroad. He is in the board of editors of the New Bach Edition, co-editor of the Bach-Jahrbuch, President of the Central Institute for Mozart Research in Salzburg, and since 1982 an official member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his recent books are Bach: Essays on His Life and Music (1991), Mozart's Requiem (1994), The World of the Bach Cantatas (1996), and The New Bach Reader: A Life of J. S. Bach in Letters and Documents (1998).

Kip S. Thorne Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics California Institute of Technology
	Kip Thorne has been mentor and thesis advisor for about 40 Ph.D. physicists, who have gone on to become world leaders in their fields. He co-authored *Gravitation* (1973), from which most of the present generation of scientists have learned general relativity, and *Black Holes: The Membrane Paradigm* (1986). He is also the author of *Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy* (1994). He laid the foundations for the theory of pulsations of relativistic stars and the gravitational waves they emit. In addition, he is a co-founder of the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) Project. “Colliding black holes, spinning neutron stars, and the Big-Bang should all produce strong gravitational waves, and those waves should carry detailed information about their sources. Do the laws of physics permit space and time to be multiply connected -- can there be traversible wormholes and `time machines'?”
	Dr. Thorne is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. He has won many prizes including the Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society, the Karl Schwarzschild Medal of the German Astronomical Society and the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award. He has served on the International Committee on General Relativity and Gravitation and the National Academy of Science's Space Science Board, which has advised NASA and Congress on space science policy.

Gerald M. Rubin Professor of Genetics and Development University of California, Berkeley, and Vice President for Biomedical Research Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Gerald Rubin is the director of the Drosophila Genome Center in Berkeley, California. Research in his laboratory is directed towards studies of the structure and function of the genome of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. He is developing the biological and computer-based tools needed to analyze and display the vast amount of information being derived from the sequencing of this genome. He is using these tools to address issues in genome organization and function, development, and evolution. He is also continuing his long-standing efforts to use large-scale genetic screens to elucidate gene-regulatory and signal transduction pathways.
Dr. Rubin is currently Professor of Genetics and Development at UC Berkeley, and Vice President for Biomedical Research at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Many of the proteins he has studied have proven important components of diseases such as cancer and neural degeneration. In addition, he has trained a new generation of researchers who continue this pioneering work. He is co-founder of Exilixis, Inc., a company pioneering the use of genetically manipulable model systems for biomedical research, and for the past two years he has collaborated with Celera Genomics to use their whole-genome shotgun sequencing strategy on the Drosophila genome. Dr. Rubin has received numerous honors, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the Academy of Arts and Sciences.