About Us

Distinguished Lecturer Series

Marker Lectures in Genetic Engineering

The Marker Lectures were established in 1984 through a gift from Russell Marker, professor emeritus of chemistry, whose pioneering synthetic methods revolutionized the steroid hormone industry and opened the door on the current era of hormone therapies, including the birth control pill.

The 2008/09 lectures will be presented by Venkatraman Ramakrishnan on September 15-16, 2008. Past Marker Lecturers include: C. David Allis, Richard Gibbs, Paul Schimmel, Leonard Guarente, Kathryn Anderson, Thomas Maniatis, Ronald Davis, Stanley Cohen, Hugh McDevitt, Paul Berg, Robert Weinberg, Mario Capecchi, Robert Tjian, Ira Herskowitz, Joan Steitz, Phil Leder, Lucy Shapiro, Harold Varmus, and Arnold J. Levine.

The Marker endowment also allows the Eberly College of Science to present annual Marker Lectures in astronomy and astrophysics, the chemical sciences, evolutionary biology, mathematical sciences, and the physical sciences.

Pollard Lecture

The Ernest C. Pollard Lecture is named in honor of Ernest C. Pollard, who taught as a professor of physics at Penn State from 1961 to 1971 and founded the Department of Biophysics, which in 1979 merged with the Department of Microbiology and the Department of Biochemistry to form the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology. The department was later renamed Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

The 2008/09 lecture will be presented by Tom Ellenberger on October 20, 2008. Past Pollard lecturers include: Robert E. Blankenship, Robert Sauer, Dennis Dean, Eckard Wimmer, Gary Felsenfeld, Eugene Nestor, Tom Maniatis, Leslie Dutton, Thomas Record, William A. Eaton, Donald Crothers, Jack W. Szostak, Thomas Steitz, Norbert Krauß, and Jonathan Widom.

Stone Memorial Lecture

The Stone Memorial Lecture is named in honor of Robert Stone, head of the former Department of Microbiology for 23 years.

The 2008/09 lecture will be presented by Jeffrey W. Roberts on November 17, 2008. Past Stone lecturers include: Jon Beckwith, Francis Chisari, Tina Henkin, Ed DeLong, Derek Lovely, Boris Magasanik, Hayden Coon, Jane Gibson, Baruch Blumberg, Evelyn Witkin, William Finnerty, Carol Woese, Richard Losick, Norman Pace, Charles Yanofsky, Sankar Adhya, Carol Gross, Ralph S. Wolfe, Alexander Johnson, Susan Gottesman, Dale Kaiser, Graham C. Walker, and Thomas Silhavy.

Robert T. Simpson Lecture in Molecular Medicine

The lectureship honors the memory of Robert T. Simpson. Dr. Simpson was an international leader for over 35 years in research on chromatin. His addition to the Penn State faculty, as the Verne M. Willaman Professor of Molecular Biology in 1995, is considered to have placed Penn State and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the forefront of chromatin research and to have greatly enhanced Penn State's research and educational missions.

The 2008/09 lecture will be announced soon.  Past Simpson lecturers include:  Randy Jirlte and Gary Felsenfeld.