Arts & Sciences

The anthropological works of Glenn Conroy, Ph.D., professor of anatomy and neurobiology and of anthropology, are on display through January 2008 in the Farrell Learning and Teaching Center.

Glenn Conroy and Jane Phillips-Conroy with their awards for outstanding teachingHis modest demeanor provides little hint of neither his brilliant career nor the ivy-paved path that serendipitously led him to Washington University in St. Louis more than 20 years ago. A renowned anthropologist, Glenn Conroy, Ph.D., has been gathering valuable fossil remains of humans and non-human primates for more than 30 years. Some of his best work is on display through January in the Farrell Learning and Teaching Center (See it now).

David Kilper/WUSTL Photo ServicesSeth CarlinThe Department of Music in Arts & Sciences will present two concerts in its newly opened 560 Music Center Nov. 17 and 18. Noted pianist Seth Carlin, professor of music, will present a solo piano recital at 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 17. In addition, the Washington University Symphony Orchestra will perform works by Schubert, Franck and Britten at 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 18.

Washington University’s Center for the Humanities and Program in Film & Media Studies, both in Arts & Sciences, will host their Fourth Annual Children’s Film Symposium Thursday and Saturday, Nov. 15 and 17. Presented in conjunction with Cinema St. Louis, the event will feature a keynote address by Neal Gabler, author of Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (2006) and a Q&A with Marion Comer, writer and director of the film 48 Angels (2006).

Novelist Brock Clarke, Ph.D., author of the darkly comic “An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England” (2007), will read from his work at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 14, for the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences.

Werner Ploberger, Ph.D., was installed as the first Thomas H. Eliot Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences on Oct. 30 in Holmes Lounge. Ploberger, who joined the Department of Economics last year, is internationally renowned for his contributions to the fields of econometrics and the theory of estimation.

How did our Solar System evolve? WUSTL physicists and a large team of colleagues marked the beginnings of that odyssey by examining samples of solar wind for neon and argon, two abundant noble gases. The work was published in the Oct. 19, 2007, issue of Science.

British historian Janet Browne, Ph.D., an expert in examining the life, times and work of Charles Darwin,will present the Thomas Hall Lecture “Charles Darwin and the Economy of Nature: Money, Metaphor and Adaptive Capital” at 4 p.m. Nov. 15 in the Laboratory Sciences Building auditorium.

A team of seismologists from Washington University in St. Louis, like members of the starship Enterprise, will “boldly go where no man has gone before” after Thanksgiving this year. The team, led by Douglas A. Wiens, Ph.D., Washington University professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, will go to remote regions of Antarctica to place seismographs in both east and west Antarctica to learn about the earth beneath the ice, and glean information about glaciers, mountains and ice streams.

British historian of science Janet Browne continues to explore Darwin’s evolutionary idea.