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Nobel
laureate to speak to Cal State Long Beach
today
By
Daniel Linck Savino
Online Forty-Niner
Assistant Opinion Editor
Alan
Heeger, a co-winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize
in chemistry, will be on campus today to
talk about his journey to the highest award
in science.
Heeger’s
general lecture, which will be held today
from 11 a.m. to noon in the Student Union
Ballroom, is titled "Risk and Innovation
in Science: A Personal History of the Road
to the Prize."
"I
hope the lessons are more general, so I
will describe from my own experience and
from a broader perspective the importance
of risk-taking in one’s endeavors,
being willing to do that, and how risk and
innovation interplay in achieving success
in your career," Heeger said.
The
key to success, Heeger said, is to "move
away from a core of knowledge into an interdisciplinary
field." There, he said, a person will
reach beyond their experiences from education
and their own background into a new, more
exciting area.
This
also ties into the lead theme of risk in
his talk. He said a person is taking a gamble
by moving in a direction that is not part
of their "core expertise." Above
all, he said, "be bold, and be willing
to try new things."
The
Nobel Laureate Lecture series is an annual
event put on by the Associated Natural Science
and Math Students council. The president
of the council, John Webster, described
the history and process of the preparing
the lectures.
"The
student council has been putting on the
Nobel laureate lecture; this is the 28th
Nobel speaker that we’ve had,"
Webster said. "The whole event is organized
from the beginning to the end by the students
within the council for the College of Natural
Sciences and Math."
This
has been a tradition since 1976, when Nobel
winner Donald Glaser talked about experiments
in evolution and cell biology. Other luminaries
among the 27 laureates include Francis Crick,
co-discoverer of the DNA helix, Linus Pauling,
physicist and the original vitamin C advocate
and Richard Feynman, famous for his string
theory diagrams.
The
process of getting such people to Cal State
Long Beach is straightforward. "We
look at the list of Nobel prize-winning
speakers on the Internet," Webster
said.
"We
look at the topics that they won their Nobel
prize for and try to figure out which topics
would be of most interest to students in
the college."
Webster
also said the council tries to keep those
topics from being repetitive. They look
at past speakers and vary the topics from
year to year.
Laura
Kingsford, dean of the College of Natural
Sciences and Math, described the heavy student
involvement as critical to the process.
"That’s
the thing that actually helps us get the
Nobel laureates here," Kingsford said.
"They really care about students. I
think if we were to call–you know,
the administrators or the faculty–we
probably would not get the same response.
I think that’s really why they come.
It’s because they care about students;
they want to come in and interact with students."
Heeger’s
second presentation, "Gene Sensors:
Detection of Specific Targeted Sequences
on DNA," will also be held in the Student
Union Ballroom, and runs from 4 to 5 p.m
today.
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