The Founders Day convocation on Thursday, Feb. 27, at 11:30 a.m. in Memorial Chapel will be a busy affair.
Besides science writer Philip Ball, who will receive an honorary doctor of science degree and deliver the main address on “Nanotechnology in Fact and Fiction,” the event will include: the
conferral of the Gideon Hawley Teacher Recognition Award, the Stillman Prize for Excellence in Teaching, recognition of dean's list students, the awarding of the Hollander Prize, and the conferral of the Chauncey Winters Research Professor of Political Science.
Some parts of the program were held over from Opening Convocation on Sept. 11, when the College used the occasion to reflect on the losses of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Besides his talk on Founders Day, Ball will meet over two days with students and faculty involved with the Converging Technologies initiative.
He will be giving a public lecture titled “The Age of Molecular Engineering” on Wednesday, Feb. 26, at 7:30 p.m. in the Nott Memorial. The talk is part of a series on General Education Science sponsored by the Hewlett Foundation.
Ball, the consultant editor of Nature, the international journal of science, has been in the thick of the hottest stories in physical sciences, from high-temperature superconductivity to the explosion of buckyball science, the debates over climate change and life on Mars.
He is the author of seven books on popular science including Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color (nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award); H2O: A Biography of Water;
and The Self-Made Tapestry. He is working on a biography of 16th-century alchemist Paracelsus.
He is science writer in residence at the University College,
London, and has written for scientific and popular audiences. He has broadcast on the BBC, commercial, and U.S. radio and given lectures to scientific and lay audiences around the world.