World Science Festival
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The World Science Festival is a science festival in New York City. The inaugural Festival took place from May 28 to June 1, 2008, and the Festival is planned as an annual event. It features different kinds of presentations: science events for a general audience, a cultural program under the auspices of actor and writer Alan Alda, with a focus on art and performances inspired by science, and a youth and family program. The Festival is the brainchild of Columbia University physicist Brian Greene and his wife, Emmy-award winning television journalist Tracy Day, and it is held in partnership with major New York City cultural and academic institutions.
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[edit] History and background
The festival is the brainchild of Brian Greene, a Columbia University physics professor and author of several popular-science books, and his wife, Emmy-award winning television journalist Tracy Day. Inspired by a visit to the 2005 Festival della Scienza in Genoa, where Greene had been invited to speak, the two decided to organize a similar festival in New York City, but with a difference: they meant to hold their festival's event to the same high production standard as that of a professional TV or theater production. On returning to New York, they proceeded to enlist scientific advisors, and to forge partnerships with the city's major universities and cultural institutions.[1] In early 2006, they founded the Science Festival Foundation (SFF), a non-profit organization based in New York City dedicated to organizing the festival and related events. Greene serves as the foundation's chairman; the directors are Alan Alda, Columbia University president Lee Bollinger, foundation president Judith Cox, Tracy Day as the festival's Executive Director, Brian Greene, and New York University John Sexton.[2]
The foundation organizes the WSF in partnership with Columbia University, New York University, the City University of New York, Rockefeller University and the Cooper Union, as well as cultural institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. Financial support comes from individuals, from numerous foundations including the Sloan Foundation, the Simons Foundation, the Templeton Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Cullman Foundation, and from corporate sponsors including Credit Suisse.[3]
[edit] 2008 Festival
The inaugural World Science Festival took place from May 28th to June 1st, 2008, at 22 different venues throughout New York City. It included 46 events, a street fair and, on its first day, the one-day World Science Summit at Columbia University, which saw the announcement of the inaugural Kavli Prizes. The Festival was attended by 120,000 people.[4] It featured different kinds of presentations: science events for a general audience, a cultural program under the auspices of actor and writer Alan Alda, with a focus on art and performances inspired by science, and a youth and family program.[5]
[edit] Festival Events
Typical Festival events combined talks, video presentations and panel discussions. Topics ranged from the quantum world to renewable energies to the implications of genomics, with participants including psychologist Nancy Andreasen, physicist and LBNL director Steven Chu, philosopher Patricia Churchland, neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, physicists Paul Davies, philosopher Daniel Dennett, musician Mark Oliver Everett, physicist and historian Peter Galison, physicist Brian Greene, Rensselaer Polytechnic president Shirley Ann Jackson, choreographer and dancer Bill T. Jones, inventor Ray Kurzweil, paleontologist Richard Leakey, cognitive scientist Marvin Minsky, biochemist Paul Nurse, physicist William Phillips, sociologist Nikolas Rose, chemist F. Sherwood Rowland, neurologist Oliver Sacks, physicist Horst Stormer, physicist Leonard Susskind, cancer researcher Harold Varmus, and actor and writer Michael York. Moderators included Charlie Rose, John Hockenberry, Robert Krulwich, Ira Flatow, Walter Isaacson, and Brian Cox.
The Festival's cultural program ranged from a string-theory themed dance performance choreographed by Karole Armitage to a story-telling event in cooperation with The Moth featuring journalist and writer Lucy Hawking, physicist Jim Gates and writer Sam Shepard, among others, to Alan Alda reprising his role as Richard Feynman in Peter Parnell's play QED and the premiere of Dear Albert, a reading for the stage written by Alda based on the letters of Albert Einstein, and featuring Anthony LaPaglia as Einstein.
Events for younger audiences included Science of Sports (with professional trainers, neuroscientist David Eagleman, and a number of athletes including Brevin Knight), on-stage interviews of robotics expert Cynthia Breazeal and physicist Leon Lederman conducted by New York City high-school students (moderated by SuChin Pak), and an event on the science of special effects and amusement park technology featuring the Disney Imagineers.[6]
[edit] Street Fair
The WSF Street Fair took place near Washington Square Park around the New York University campus on Saturday, May 30. Among other attractions, there were appearances by Disney's animatronic dinosaur Lucky, demonstrations by teams participating in the New York/New Jersey FIRST Robotics Competition, the Magic School Bus, a movable museum from the American Museum of Natural History and a live performance by the"Mathemagician" Arthur T. Benjamin. Also featured were interactive science experiments presented by Liberty Science Center and the New York Hall of Science, "science rapper" Zach Powers, impromptu performances by a "Science Squad", and live presentations by Lucy Hawking and others.[7]
[edit] World Science Summit
Preceding the public events was the invitation-only World Science Summit on May 28, 2008, at which New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg opened the Festival. At the summit, an invited audience interacted with top scientists in several panel discussions. Participants included Nina Federoff (Science and Technology Advisor to U. S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice), biologist David Baltimore and cancer researcher Harold Varmus.[8] As part of the Summit, the winners of the first Kavli Prizes were announced in a simulcast linking New York City and Oslo. The first Kavli Prize for astrophysics was awarded to Maarten Schmidt and Donald Lynden-Bell. Louis E. Brus and Sumio Iijima shared the nanoscience prize, while Pasko Rakic, Thomas Jessell and Sten Grillner were awarded the neuroscience prize.[9]
[edit] References
- ^ Cf. Musser, George (April 25, 2008), “A Science Fête Project: A Q&A with Brian Greene”, Scientific American, <http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-science-project-q-a-with-brian-greene>
- ^ Non-profit status and chairman position from the foundation's 990-EZ form for 2006, accessible online via [www.guidestar.org GuideStar]. Current board of directors from the listing on the World Science Festival website.
- ^ As listed in Overbye, Dennis (April 3, 2008), “Coming to New York, a Science Event for the Masses”, New York Times: E2, <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/03/arts/03fest.html>
- ^ Venues and event numbers: Overbye, Dennis (June 3, 2008), “An Overflowing Five-Day Banquet of Science and Its Meanings”, New York Times, <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/science/03fest.html>. Summit: Timmer, John (May 28, 2008), “First Kavli Prize winners in new fields of science announced”, Ars Technica, <http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080528-first-kavli-prize-winners-in-new-fields-of-science-announced.html>. Attendance: Souccar, Miriam (June 6, 2008), “City's Science Festival attracts record numbers”, Crain's New York Business, <http://www.crainsnewyork.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080606/FREE/571186140/1047>.
- ^ Timmer, John (April 3, 2008), “NYC to host the World Science Festival in May”, Ars Technica, <http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080402-nyc-to-host-the-world-science-festival-in-may.html>
- ^ As per the event listings and participant list on the WSF Website, last accessed on June 8, 2008.
- ^ Graeber, Laurel (May 30, 2008), “Spare Times: For Children - World Science Festival”, New York Times, <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/arts/30wkids.html>
- ^ Richburg, Keith B. (May 29, 2008), “U.S. Experts Bemoan Nation's Loss of Stature in the World of Science”, Washington Post: A04
- ^ Timmer, John (May 28, 2008), “First Kavli Prize winners in new fields of science announced”, Ars Technica, <http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080528-first-kavli-prize-winners-in-new-fields-of-science-announced.html>
