Newspaper

  • You must login/register in order to contribute to this group.

Home » Groups » Newspaper

Meet the Scientists

Submitted by hfeldman on Mon, 04/30/2007 - 3:18pm.

On April 24, twenty-five SLA students attended “Meet the Scientists” at the Franklin Institute. At the event, five scientists from the top of their fields spoke at a panel discussion. Schools from all over Philadelphia came to meet the scientists and ask questions. Included on the panel were:

  • Robert Dennard, PhD, who developed D-RAM, dynamic random access memory, which is used in just about every computer produced today,
  • Nancy Wexler, PhD, whose work in genetics has included discovering the gene responsible for Huntington’s Disease,
  • Merton Flemings, ScD, notable for his hand in developing the industry of semi-solid metalworking.
  • Arthur McDonald, PhD, represented a pair working in physics who discovered “that the three known types of elementary particles called neutrinos change into one another when traveling over sufficiently long distances, and that neutrinos have mass.”
  • And Stuart Card, PhD, who works in human-computer interaction, and had a part in developing what we now know as the mouse.

    These men and women are all this year’s Franklin Institute Award Laureates for the Bower Awards and Ben Franklin Medals.

    From one to three o’clock was a question and answer session in Stearns Auditorium. Many of the questions asked of these scientists were factual in nature, such as wondering how the discovery of neutrinos and their mass changed physics. Many of the questions were directed towards Dr. Wexler, on how she went about her research, and what was being done today to further understanding of Huntington’s. Some questions for Dr. McDonald asked about the experiment that led to discovery of the mass of neutrinos and how the experiment was set up and the thought process leading up to the final set-up. Although some answers from the panelists may have been a bit technical, their words gave insight into their fields and what the science is really like. Thank you to our partner, The Franklin Institute, for giving us this incredible opportunity.

    • »