SAMUEL DORSKY SYMPOSIUM ON PUBLIC MONUMENTS

Speakers' Biographies

Donald M. Reynolds, founder and director of The Monuments Conservancy, is an art historian and the author of numerous books, articles, and reviews on American art and architecture, which include: Masters of American Sculpture, from the American Renaissance to the Millennium (New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1994), “Remove Not the Ancient Landmark”: Public Monuments and Moral Values, ed., (New York: Gordon and Breach Publishers, 1996), Monuments and Masterpieces: Histories and Views of Public Sculpture in New York City, rev. ed. (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997; original edition, Macmillan, 1988), The Architecture of New York City, rev ed. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1994; original edition, Macmillan, 1984). He taught at Columbia University in New York City (1970-2003), where he earned his doctorate in art history (1974), and is the founder of The Samuel Dorsky Symposium on Public Monuments (1991), an annual tribute to the renowned art historian, Rudolf Wittkower , whose lectures on the interrelationship between the East and the West, from ancient to modern times, he compiled and edited in: The Impact of Non-European Civilizations on the Art of the West (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), The Writings of Rudolf Wittkower: A Bibliography (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1989). He was consultant to the Kemper Foundation for The Corps of Discovery, the monument to Lewis and Clark in Kansas City, Missouri, unveiled in 2000, and for the National Black Catholic Congress, he designed the sculpture program of Our Mother of Africa Chapel in The National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, D. C., 2001.

Rev. John J. Piderit was born and reared in New York City. Upon graduation from high school, he entered the Society of Jesus, studied mathematics and philosophy at Fordham University, and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude in 1967. He continued his studies at the Institute of Philosophy and Theology of Sankt Georgen in Frankfurt, Germany, where he earned a Licentiate in Sacred Theology magna cum laude in 1971. He was ordained the same year in Frankfurt. Father Piderit went on to earn a master’s degree in economics from Oxford University in 1974 and master’s and doctoral degrees in economics from Princeton University in 1979. Father Piderit returned to Fordham in 1979 as assistant professor in the department of economics. Later named associate professor, he also served in administrative posts, including assistant chairperson for graduate studies, assistant chairperson of the economics department, and director of the program in international political economy and development. From 1990 to 1993, Father Piderit served as corporate vice-president for Marquette University in Milwaukee, when he was named president of Loyola University in Chicago, where he served until 2001. He then established the not-for-profit corporation Catholic Education Institute in New York City and serves as its president. The purpose of the Institute is to enhance the education of Catholics and to further the Catholic intellectual tradition.

Owen Gingerich is Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and of the History of Science at Harvard University and a Senior Astronomer Emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Trained as an astrophysicist, he is co-author of two successful standard models for the solar atmosphere, the first to take into account rocket and satellite observations of the sun; the second of these papers has received more than 700 literature citations. In recent decades he has become an international expert on Copernicus; he has examined nearly 600 copies of the Polish astronomer’s masterpiece and has described them individually in a 430-page monograph. The making of this three-decade long survey is described in his ironically titled classic, The Book Nobody Read. Professor Gingerich has been vice-president of the American Philosophical Society (America’s oldest scientific academy), and he has served as chairman of the U. S. National Committee of the International Astronomical Union. He has been a councilor of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), and he helped to organize its Historical Astronomy Division. The AAS awarded him their Education Prize for 2004. He has written 600 technical or educational articles and reviews, and as an editor of the Journal for the History of Astronomy he edited just over 1000 reviews. Two anthologies of his essays are The Great Copernicus Chase and Other Adventures in Astronomical History and The Eye of Heaven: Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Kepler. Most recently published is God’s Universe, the William Belden Noble Lectures at Harvard in 2005.

Ian Tattersall is a paleoanthropologist in the Department of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History. Trained in archaeology and anthropology at Cambridge, and in geology and vertebrate paleontology at Yale, Dr. Tattersall has concentrated his research since the 1960s in two main areas: the analysis of the human fossil record and its integration with evolutionary theory; and the study of the ecology and systematics of the lemurs of Madagascar. He is a prominent interpreter of human paleontology to the public through major exhibitions and special programs at the American Museum of Natural History, notably the highly acclaimed Hall of Human Origins, and since 1968 more than 300 scientific articles and books including Paleontology: A Brief History of Life (2010), The Fossil Trail: How We Know What We Think We Know About Human Evolution (2nd ed., 2009), Human Origins: What Bones and Genomes Tell Us About Ourselves (2009, with Rob DeSalle), and The World from Beginnings to 4000 BCE (2008). He is the recipient of the 2000 W. W. Howells Prize of the American Anthropological Association for Becoming Human, the Osman Hill Medal of the Primate Society of Great Britain (2002), and the Institute of Human Origins Lifetime Achievement Award (1993). Dr. Tattersall is a Fellow of the Linnaen Society of London and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and his professional affiliations include the Paleoanthropology Society, the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, the International Primate Society, the Society of Sigma XI, and the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. He is Adjunct Professor, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University, and Adjunct Professor, Program of Anthropology, Graduate Center, CUNY.

Robert Shapiro, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Senior Research Scientist, New York University, where he has taught since 1961, earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Harvard University followed by two years of postdoctoral study in chemistry at Cambridge University and biochemistry at New York University Medical School. His areas of interest are structure and reactivity of DNA, chemical and mechanisms of mutagenesis and carcinogenesis, the origin of life, and the detection of extraterrestrial life. Since the 1960s, in addition to many media appearances, lectures, and interviews, he has published more than 150 articles, reviews, commentaries, and internet publications and four books written for the general public: Life Beyond Earth (with Gerald Feinberg, William Morrow, New York, 1980, translations in Italian and Japanese), Origins: A Skeptic’s Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth (Simon and Schuster, 1985, translations in French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese; new French edition with new Prologue and Epilogue, and new Spanish edition, 1994), The Human Blueprint (St. Martin’s Press, 1991, alternate Book-of-the-Month Club Selection, September 1991), Bantam Books, 1992, translations in German, Dutch, Spanish, and Japanese, German paperback edition 1995 selected Science Book of the Year by the jury Bild am Wissenschaft, Planetary Dreams: the Quest to Discover Life Beyond Earth (John Wiley, 1999), paperback edition, 2001, nominated for the Pfizer Prize, History of Science and Society, and the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award. Professor Shapiro was awarded the Trotter Prize in Complexity, Information and Inference in 2004.

Robert E. Pollack is Professor of Biological Sciences, Lecturer in Psychiatry at the Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, Adjunct Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary, Adjunct Professor of Religion at Columbia University, and Director of the Center for the Study of Science and Religion at Columbia University. Dr. Pollack graduated from Columbia University with a B. A. in physics, and received a Ph.D. in biology from Brandeis University. He has been a professor of biological sciences at Columbia since 1978, and was dean of Columbia College from 1982 to 1989. He received the Alexander Hamilton Medal from Columbia University, and has held a Guggenheim Fellowship. He currently is on the advisory board of Columbia/Barnard Hillel, the Fred Friendly Seminars, and has been a Senior Consultant for the Director, Program of Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He is a Fellow of the AAAS, and the World Economic Forum in Davos. He is the author of Signs of Life: The Languages and Meanings of DNA (Houghton Mifflin/Viking Penguin, 1994), The Missing Moment: How the Unconscious Shapes Modern Science (Houghton Mifflin, 1999), and The Faith of Biology and the Biology of Faith: Meaning, Order, and Free Will in Modern Medical Science (Columbia University Press, 2000). Signs of Life received the Lionel Trilling Award and has been translated into six languages.

Aileen A. O’Donoghue is an Associate Professor of Physics at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. Born in Denver, Colorado, Professor O’Donoghue graduated from Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. She earned her M. S. in Astronomy at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology with a study of comets at the Joint Observatory for Cometary Research and her Ph.D. with a study of galaxies at the Very Large Array Radio Telescope (VLA). She joined the faculty of St. Lawrence University in 1988 and was granted tenure in 1993. Two years later, she was a visiting professor and scientist at Cornell University, and again in 2001, where she was involved in the optical observations of galaxies. Professor O’Donoghue continued her studies at the VLA in 1997, and on sabbatical in 2001-2002, joined the Vatican Observatory Research Group in Tucson, Arizona. She serves on the board of directors of the Adirondack Public Observatory. She has also participated in the physics and cosmology group of the Science and the Spiritual Quest discussions sponsored by the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences in Paris. A regular guest on Public Radio, Professor O’Donoghue writes for Living Faith and contributed the “Mountain Skies” column in Adirondack, the magazine of the Adirondack Mountain Club from 1991 to 2001. Professor O’Donoghue is a lay minister in the Diocese of Ogdensburg, New York. In her recently published The Sky is not a Ceiling: An Astronomer’s Faith, she explores how she lost her faith in God and found it again through her studies in science.

David Ruel Foster has taught philosophy in Seton Hall University’s School of Theology since 1987. Currently he is the director of Seton Hall’s Center for Vocation and Servant Leadership. He earned his doctorate from The Catholic University of America and his baccalaureate from Notre Dame University. He also earned an STB in theology from the Dominican House of Studies in 1980. His doctoral dissertation studied St. Thomas’ arguments for the immateriality of the intellect. In a dozen articles and reviews, he has focused on the problems of metaphysical structure and the philosophy of person. As chairman of the American Catholic Philosophical Association Committee on Priestly Formation, David Foster has hosted regular meetings on the philosophy curriculum in seminaries. To this end he has published articles on how theology uses philosophy and the recent history of philosophy in seminaries. In 2003 he co-edited The Two Wings of Catholic Thought: Essays on Fides et Ratio, with Father Joseph Koterski, S. J. of Fordham University. He is currently editing a volume entitled The Vocation of a Catholic University.