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Welcoming Remarks
Paul Nurse, Ph.D., became Rockefeller University’s ninth president in
September 2003. He shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
with Leland H. Hartwell and R. Timothy Hunt for advancing scientific
understanding about the biological process by which cells make copies
of themselves both in health and in diseases such as cancer. One of
Nurse’s main concerns as president is insuring that scientists at Rockefeller
and other universities have opportunities to inform and engage the public,
so that science will continue to have the public’s trust — and a “license
to operate.”
Moderator
Ira Flatow has shared his enthusiasm for science with public radio listeners
for more than 30 years as National Public Radio’s (NPR) award-winning
science correspondent and host of NPR’s Talk of the Nation: Science Friday.
His numerous network TV credits include six years as host and writer for the
Emmy-award-winning Newton’s Apple on PBS (1982-87), and science reporter
for CBS This Morning and PM Magazine. Flatow has worked for a variety of
cable networks, including CNBC, Nickelodeon, The Learning Channel, The
Discovery Channel and The History Channel. He recently wrote, produced, and
hosted the award-winning PBS documentary “Transistorized!” about the history
of the transistor. His articles have appeared in many publications, ranging
from Woman’s Day to ESPN Magazine to American Lawyer. His most recent
book is They All Laughed…From Light Bulbs to Lasers: The Fascinating Stories
Behind the Great Inventions That Have Changed Our Lives (HarperCollins).
Panelists
Wendy Wasserstein is an award-winning playwright, seen by many as the
voice of a generation for her comic, satirical and inspirational examinations
of contemporary life. When her play The Heidi Chronicles won both a
Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award she became the first woman to receive both
awards for the same work. Her major Broadway hit The Sisters Rosensweig
and her play An American Daughter both received Tony nominations as well.
Wasserstein’s writing extends beyond the stage. She is the author of three
books, including a children’s book, and she wrote the screenplay The Object
of My Affection, made into a major motion picture. For New York City
Opera she wrote the libretto for The Festival of Regrets; she also wrote the
libretto for the San Francisco Opera’s 2002 production of Franz Lehar’s
The Merry Widow. Wasserstein has taught at New York University, Columbia
and Princeton.
Shiksa Goddess (or, How I Spent My Forties), 2001.
Ursula von Rydingsvard takes forms that are recognizable in daily life,
such as stairs, bowls and jars, and transforms them in raw milled cedar
into sculptures of a monumental scale. The surfaces, hacked and furrowed,
emanate both contained movement and rhythmic grace. Frequently
massive in presence and scale, her sculptures communicate sensuality
and emotion and a sense of intimacy, which belies their size. “Being big
doesn’t mean being invulnerable,” she said in a 2002 New York Times
interview. Her sculpture has appeared at the Nelson-Atkins Museum,
Kansas City, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Köln Skuptur Park, Cologne,
Germany and New York’s Central Park. Her four-story public commission,
titled Katul-Katul, at the Queens County Family Courthouse in Jamaica,
was installed one year ago. She is now working on an over 80-foot public
sculpture for the lobby of the Bloomberg Building in New York City. In
addition to the Guggenheim Fellowship and two National Endowment for
the Arts Grants, she has received the Joan Mitchell Award and American
Academy of Arts and Letters Sculpture Award.
Can’t Eat Black, 2001-02, cedar.
Sarah Sze is an artist who transforms everyday objects into tower-like
sculptures and site-specific installations. Drawing inspiration from
architecture and art history, Sze’s carefully arranged combinations of
materials such as plastic plants, candies, packing materials, nails, small
desk fans and aluminum ladders provoke novel ways of looking at
familiar space. Sze is a 2003 recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. She
has had solo exhibits at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Institute of Contemporary Art, London,
and the Foundation Cartier, Paris. Her work has also appeared in group
shows in venues such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York,
the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, the Akademie der Kunste,
Berlin, and the 48th Venice Biennial.
Triple Point of Water, 2003.
Courtesy Marianne Boesky Gallery
David Small, Ph.D., is the principal and founder of Small Design Firm, based
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which specializes in exhibits that explore the
use of three-dimensional and dynamic typography. Small’s project titled
Rethinking the Book used digital technology to juxtapose the Torah with
corresponding sacred writings in the Talmud, allowing the viewer to
explore issues of interpretation and translation through the use of tactile,
anachronistic dial controls. Completed as a Ph.D. thesis at MIT’s Media
Laboratory in 1999, it was chosen for the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design
Museum’s Design Culture Now 2000 triennial show. In addition, his work
has been exhibited in Documenta11, the Centre Pompidou and the
Museum of the Moving Image. Small’s work has been featured in Scientific
American, Metropolis and Martha Stewart Living, among other publications.
Small Design Firm has created exhibits for the Asia Society and Museum
of Sex in New York, the Mary Baker Eddy Library in Boston and Chicago’s
Museum of Science and Industry.
The Hall of Ideas at the Mary Baker Eddy Library in Boston.
Titia de Lange, Ph.D., is Rockefeller’s Leon Hess Professor and head of the
Laboratory of Cell Biology and Genetics. She is a leader in the study of
telomeres, specialized structures that protect the ends of the chromosomes
in cells, similar to the way in which the cap on a shoelace prevents it from
unraveling. Telomeres shorten in length every time a cell divides, and among
de Lange’s achievements is discovering how a cell ceases to reproduce itself
when its telomeres become too short to protect the ends of chromosomes.
With colleagues, de Lange also found that telomeres have a looped structure.
Telomeres play roles in cancer and aging, and de Lange’s ongoing studies
are offering important insights into how telomeres function in health and
disease. Among many honors, de Lange is a recipient of the Paul Marks
Award for Cancer Research and the Charlotte Friend Award of the American
Association for Cancer Research. She received an honorary degree from
the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, in 2003. de Lange serves as a
scientific advisor on the boards of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the MIT Cancer Center and the Research
Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna.
Science as art: in the absence of a protein that protects telomeres,
chromosomes fuse abnormally. Credit: Anna Jauch and Giulia Celli
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