Scientist Stephen Jay Gould To Speak At Annual Baylor Lecture Nov. 7

by LoAna Lopez

Dr. Stephen Jay Gould, one of the nation's best known contemporary scientists, will be the featured speaker for Baylor University's annual Roy B. Albaugh Phi Beta Kappa lecture. Gould will speak on "Questioning the Millennium: Why We Cannot Predict the Future" at 11:30 a.m. Nov. 7 in Jones Concert Hall of the McCrary Music Building on the Baylor campus.
The speech is free and open to the public.
Gould earned his undergraduate degree in geology from Antioch College in 1963 and earned a Ph.D. in paleontology from Columbia University in 1967. He currently is the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and professor of geology at Harvard University, curator of Invertebrate Paleontology in the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology and adjunct member of the department of the history of science. His courses include paleontology, biology, geology and the history of science. Since 1996, he also has been Vincent Astor Visiting Research Professor of Biology at New York University and now divides his time between New York and Cambridge.
He won the American Book Award for The Panda's Thumb and the National Book Critic's Circle Award for The Mismeasure of Man. His newest book, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life, focuses on the relationship between science and religion.
Dr. Kenneth Wilkins, professor of biology and associate dean of the graduate school, said Gould will speak about a timely and pertinent topic.
"He is an appropriate speaker because he hits head-on the topic of religion and science," said Wilkins, who is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa committee that scheduled the lecture.
Each year, the Baylor Phi Beta Kappa chapter presents a public lecture by a distinguished scholar. The Roy B. Albaugh Phi Beta Kappa Lectureship was endowed in the late 1970s by Mrs. Oma Buchanan Albaugh in memory of her late husband, a Waco business and civic leader from his move to Waco in 1920 until his death in 1964.
For more information about Phi Beta Kappa or the lecture series, visit the website at www.baylor.edu/~phibetakappa/.