Montclair Synagogue To Host Columbia Biology Prof

From Bnai Keshet:Robert Pollack, Ph.D., biologist, author of several books exploring the intersection of science and subjectivity and professor of Biological Sciences at Columbia University will speak on that topic at Bnai Keshet on Sunday morning, January 21, at 10:30 a.m., in the main sanctuary, 99 So. Fullerton Ave., Montclair.

Pollack is an American biologist who serves as director of the University Seminars at Columbia, the fifth since its founding in 1944, and as affiliate faculty of the American Studies Program. From 1999-2012, he was director of the Center for the Study of Science and Religion, a program within Columbia’s Earth Institute. In 2014 his interest in questions that lie at the intersection of science and subjectivity led him to establish the Research Cluster on Science and Subjectivity, a project within Columbia’s Center for Science and Society. Listen to a recent talk he gave on faith and reason.

A 1961 graduate of Columbia College, Pollack received a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Brandeis University, did postdoctoral pathology work with Howard Green at NYU Medical Center and was also at the Weizmann Institute in Israel with Ernest Winocour. He worked with James Watson at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory where he established a research program on reversion of cancer cells. Pollack became a tenured associate professor of Microbiology at SUNY Stony Brook Medical Center before returning to Columbia as a Biological Sciences professor. He served as Columbia College dean from 1982 to 1989, overseeing the enrollment of women there for the first time.

Pollack regularly writes on molecular biology, medical ethics and science education and has written or edited ten books, including Signs of Life: the Language and Meanings of DNA (1994), which won the Lionel Trilling Award and has been translated into six languages, The Faith of Biology and the Biology of Faith: Order, meaning and free will in modern science (2000), and The Missing Moment: How the unconscious shapes modern science (2001). His most recent book is The Course of Nature, a book of drawings by the artist Amy Pollack, accompanied by his short explanatory essays.

Pollack received the Alexander Hamilton Medal from Columbia University, the Gershom Mendes Seixas Award from the Columbia/Barnard Hillel, and held a Guggenheim Fellowship. He presented the Schoff Lectures at Columbia in 1998, which led to his third book, The Faith of Biology and the Biology of Faith.

The lecture is part of Bnai Keshet Kaplan Minyans, named for Reconstructionist Judaism founder Mordecai Kaplan, who sought to create a Jewish framework for discussions of ethics, culture, history and current events. They are designed for people who want to enjoy a communal experience and enrich their understanding of Jewish peoplehood in an alternative, less traditional setting.

Bnai Keshet, an inclusive Reconstructionist synagogue serving the Greater Essex area, is located at 99 So. Fullerton Ave., Montclair. For more information, visit www.bnaikeshet.org/event/kaplanminyans.

Image Courtesy of Bnai Keshet