Nobel Prize-winner and 2018 Silvers Visiting Scholar Eric Kandel explores his career in brain science and its connection to art through the lens of his autobiography, where he reflects on how his experience as a young Jewish boy in Vienna 1938 has shaped his life as a scientist and a thinker. His recent book Reductionism in Art and Brain Science—Bridging the Two Worlds is one of several in which he finds common ground between neuroscience and humanistic questions.
Eric R. Kandel, MD, is University Professor and Fred Kavli Professor of Neuroscience at Columbia University, Senior Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Director of the Kavli Institute for Brain Science, and Co-Director of the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. Dr. Kandel has explored the molecular mechanisms of memory storage in the sea slug Aplysia and mice, and expanded his research to animal models of memory disorders, mental illness, and drug abuse. He has received over 20 honorary degrees and is a member of the US and four other national academies of science; and he has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Harvey Prize and the Wolf Prize of Israel, the National Medal of Science USA, and the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Dr. Kandel has published two books on the intersection of art and science: The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present, and his latest, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures.
Free and open to the public, but RSVP required; please visit the Eventbrite to register.
This lecture is made possible by the generosity of Dr. Garry Rayant and Dr. Kathy Fields-Rayant. This lecture is also cosponsored by the Center for Neuroscience & Society, the Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures, the Department of the History of Art, the Department of Medical Ethics & Health Policy, MindCORE (Mind Center for Outreach, Research, and Education), the Office of the Dean of Arts & Sciences, and the Visual Studies Program.
