Caltech Announces Earnest C. Watson Lecture Series for 1999-2000

PASADENA-The California Institute of Technology's Earnest C. Watson Lecture Series, entering its 77th year, announces its fall lineup for the 1999-2000 season. All lectures are at 8 p.m. Wednesdays in Beckman Auditorium, 332 S. Michigan Ave., on Caltech's campus in Pasadena. The lectures are free and open to the public.

On Oct. 6, learn how your plastic grocery bags do more than just carry produce when Caltech Professor of Chemistry Robert H. Grubbs, Victor and Elizabeth Atkins Professor of Chemistry, presents "Grocery Bags to Baseball Bats: Polymers and Us."

On Oct. 20, David J. Anderson, a professor of biology at Caltech and an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, examines the future prospects of stem cells currently used in regenerative medicine in "Stem Cells to the Rescue." Already transplants of adult blood stem cells have proven to regenerate the immune systems of high-dose chemotherapy patients and Anderson will explore the possibility of other stem cells at work.

On Nov. 3, give your stockbroker the night off and attend "Of Bulls, Bears and Crystal Balls." During this evening, Peter L. Bossaerts, a professor of finance at Caltech, discusses the scientific merit of the modern theory of finance, which predicts how financial markets reallocate risk and at what prices.

On Nov. 17, with the year 2000 a mere six weeks away, the question on everybody's mind will be, are we ready? Robert J. Neary, the chief administrative information officer at Caltech, reviews the current status of readiness, shares the good news, and reminds us how to prepare for the bad news with "The Y2K Problem: Solved?"

The lecture series continues on Jan. 12, 2000, with "What Happened in Aeronautics after the Wright Brothers?" Fred E. C. Culick, Richard L. and Dorothy M. Hayman Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Professor of Jet Propulsion at Caltech, reveals why America went from the first in flight in 1903 to trailing the French in virtually every flying record less than a year later.

The series was started by the late Caltech physicist Earnest Watson as a Friday evening public lecture program designed to explain science to the local community.

For more information, call 1 (888) 2CALTECH or (626) 395-4652.

Contact: Jill Perry Caltech Media Relations (626) 395-3226