Scientists Look to Future

Scientists glimpsed into the future of science at the “Science on the Edge” forum, one of six symposia held as part of the inauguration festivities for University President Lawrence H. Summers on Friday.

About 100 invited guests attended the panel discussion, which brought together leading Harvard scientists from the fields of biology, computer science, medicine and physics.

Nobel laureate and Baird Professor of Science Dudley R. Herschbach, the panel’s moderator, invited the other panelists as representatives of the best science being done at Harvard.

Herschbach opened the symposia by emphasizing the importance Summers attaches to science. The panel’s mission, in Summers’ words, was to “look to the future, [and] have them tell us what we will learn from science in the next 25 years,” Herschbach said.

Herschbach described the difficulties in his task with sarcasm, referring to Summers’ economic background.

“Economists are used to making firm, reliable, long-term predictions,” Herschbach said, soliciting laughter from the audience.

This caveat did not prevent the scientist from describing what research they were conducting and where they saw it headed, however.

Judah Folkman, Andrus professor of pediatric surgery and professor of anatomy and cellular biology at the medical school, talked about leading advances in angiogenesis research.

Angiogenesis is the growth of blood vessels and is involved primarily in wound healing and the female reproductive system. Because all forms of cancer are angiogenesis-dependent, angiogenesis inhibitors have emerged as an important new class of drugs in the fight against cancer.

Merging real life to the artificial, Higgins Professor of Natural Sciences Barbara J. Grosz described her efforts at making computers more user-friendly.

Grosz said the current state of human interactions with computers is inadequate.

She asked the audience to imagine an employee telling his boss, “I can’t find the letter you wrote. I’m going to burn the file drawer.”

Grosz is working on ways to remedy the situation, by developing systems that communicate naturally. In the future, she said, computers will work as a team with humans.

Lene V. Hau, McKay professor of applied physics, briefly explained her work in slowing light from its standard speed to 38 miles per hour.

Hau said she also has been able to “stop a light pulse target and revive it controllably.”

Andrew Murray, professor of molecular and cellular biology, shed light on the emerging role of genetics. He explained the difficulty in decoding the information contained in human DNA.

The head of Harvard’s Center of Genomics Research, Murray said he hopes to devise new techniques to better understand all the protein molecules. He emphasized that the work to understand the genome has profound implications for the fields of medicine and human knowledge in general.

Working on the organisimal side of biology, Pellegrino University Research Professor Edward O. Wilson described his efforts to learn the full extent of biological diversity.

“We don’t know to the nearest order of magnitude the number of plants and animals,” he said.

And bacteria, he said, “represent the black hole of biodiversity.”

Murray and Wilson discussed the meeting of organismic and evolutionary biology with molecular biology. The relationship between these two branches of biology used to be rocky, but is now becoming congenial because biologists are understanding the inherent relationships of these fields, they said.

In addition to scientific advances, the panel also addressed issues of women in science. Grosz, who serves as dean of science at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, said she would like to see more women scientists at Harvard.

Audience members said they appreciated the discussion and thought it was beneficial.

“I thought is was an excellent symposium,” said John S. Toll, president of Washington College in Chestertown, Md.

“It was a wonderful introduction to the future of science,” said audience member Christine Hartl.

—Staff writer Zachary Z Norman can be reached at znorman@fas.harvard.edu.