University of Delaware faculty members with expertise in each of the six areas of study that won this year's Nobel Prizes will discuss the significance of the winners' work from 7-9:30 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 29, in the Harker Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Laboratory.
The program, which is free and open to the public, is designed for non-specialists, with students, staff, faculty and community members encouraged to attend.
The annual event will consist of six short talks and an opportunity for the audience to ask questions. Sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences, the lecture will be held in Harker Lab's first-floor commons area.
The series of talks is held each year as a way to give interested members of the UD community and the public more in-depth information about the Nobel laureates' research than is found in general news stories about the prizes. The speakers are faculty members who conduct research and scholarship in areas closely connected to the prize-winning work.
This year's speakers and their topics, as described by the Nobel Prize organization in announcing the honorees, are:
Mark Bowden, instructor in English and Distinguished Writer in Residence, will discuss the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded this year to Svetlana Alexievich, a Belarusian author, for what the committee called "her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time."
John Jungck, professor of biological sciences and mathematical sciences, will speak about the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Half of the 2015 prize was given jointly to William C. Campbell and Satoshi Omura for their discoveries concerning a novel therapy against infections caused by roundworm parasites and the other half to Youyou Tu for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against malaria.
Adrienne Lucas, associate professor of economics, will describe the work done by Angus Deaton, awarded this year's Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for his analysis of consumption, poverty and welfare.
Thomas Gaisser, Martin A. Pomerantz Chair of Physics and Astronomy, will speak about the Nobel Prize in Physics, given to Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, showing that neutrinos have mass.
Muqtedar Khan, associate professor of political science and international relations, will discuss the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded this year to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet for its "decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution" that launched the region's Arab Spring uprisings in 2011.
Zhihao Zhuang, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry, will speak about the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, given to Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar for their mechanistic studies of DNA repair.
