Arts & Sciences

Concerts are at 7:30 p.m. every Sunday night in July in Brookings Quadrangle.

Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis recognized the achievements of five of its alumni at a ceremony and reception May 16 in the Arts & Sciences Laboratory Science Building on campus.

Carl M. Bender, Ph.D., and Thomas A. Woolsey, M.D., professors at Washington University in St. Louis, have been awarded fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Bender and Woolsey are among 184 U.S. and Canadian Guggenheim fellows selected this year from more than 3,200 applicants for awards totaling $6,750,000. Guggenheim fellows, which include artists, scholars and scientists, are appointed on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.

TempletonThe notion of race in humans is completely a social concept without any biological basis, according to a biologist at Washington University in St. Louis. There are not enough genetic differences between groups of people to say that there are sub-lineages (races) of humans, said Alan R. Templeton, Ph.D., professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. On the other hand, there are different races in many other species, including chimpanzees, our closest evolutionary relatives. Templeton was part of a recent St. Louis panel discussion that previewed the first episode of the National Public Television’s “Race: The Power of an Allusion” series running nationally on May 4, 11, and 18 (check local stations for times).

Economic research on the micro foundations of markets and price formation will be among topics discussed May 23-25.

Students and recent graduates from Arts & Sciences have made an impressive showing, including four Mellon fellowship recipients.

Viewers will be treated to a lunar eclipse May 15th.A total lunar eclipse of the moon will be visible from across North America late Thursday, but whether the moon turns red depends on the presence of tiny particles in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, says Richard Heuermann, Outreach Program Coordinator in the University’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

WillAn astrophysicist at Washington University in St. Louis is disputing the claim that measurements of light bending are useful for determining the speed of gravity.

Washington University students and recent graduates in Arts & Sciences have made an impressive showing in their annual quest for prestigious national scholarships and fellowships, including four recipients of the 2003 Andrew W. Mellon Fellowships in Humanistic Studies. “It’s an honor for any institution to place a student in the Mellon program and getting four of these awards in one year is fairly amazing,” said Dirk M. Killen, Ph.D., assistant dean, academic coordinator and fellowships adviser in Arts & Sciences.

GassWilliam H. Gass, Ph.D., the David May Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Humanities and founder of the International Writers Center, both in Arts & Sciences, has won this year’s PEN/Spielvogel Diamonstein Award in the Art of the Essay category.