Events
CERN: What’s it All About?
Some scientists believe that the Higgs boson, a never-before-seen subatomic particle, is the fundamental building block of the universe that gives mass to matter. Recent high-energy particle experiments at CERN and Fermilab have hinted at the existence of this particle. But what exactly is the Higgs boson and why do some people call it the ‘god particle’? The program will highlight the importance of this subatomic particle and discuss what would its discovery mean for physics and society. The program will also present recent advances of the Higgs boson research and future directions of high-energy particle experiment in Europe and the USA.
Speakers
- Young-Kee Kim, Deputy Director, Fermilab and Professor of Physics, the University of Chicago
The event is $10.00 for adavanced registration for non-members, $15.00 at the door for non-members, and $5.00 for students. The registration and a reception will begin at 5:00 pm.
Public Lecture by Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, Author of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.
On May 1st, 2012, the PS-OC will sponsor a public lecture by Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. Widely hailed by critics as an ambitious, important, and unique contribution to the history of the social and scientific responses to cancer, the book received a 2011 Pulitzer Prize in the general nonfiction category.
The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence. Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with—and perished from—for more than five thousand years. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.” The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist.
From the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave cut off her malignant breast, to the nineteenth-century recipients of primitive radiation and chemotherapy to Mukherjee’s own leukemia patient, Carla, The Emperor of All Maladies is about the people who have soldiered through fiercely demanding regimens in order to survive—and to increase our understanding of this iconic disease.
Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee is a cancer physician and researcher. He is an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University and a staff cancer physician at Columbia University Medical Center. A Rhodes scholar, he graduated from Stanford University, University of Oxford, and Harvard Medical School. He has published articles in Nature, The New England Journal of Medicine, The New York Times, and The New Republic. He lives in New York with his wife and daughters.
A reception for the event will be held in atrium outside of the Ryan Family Auditorium at 5:00 pm.
Supported by the Northwestern University Physical Science-Oncology Center, Award No. U54CA143869 from the National Cancer Institute, the Chemistry of Life Processes Institute, and the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center.
