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The Annual Report 2006 - 2007 of the
Mortimer and Raymond Sackler Institute of Advanced Studies
Table of Contents
1. Short biographical sketch of Prof. Amnon Yariv Report by Dr. Jacob Scheuer Summary of article: "Coherent Combination of Semiconductor MOPA Lasers Using Optical Phase Lock Loops"
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2. Short biographical sketch of Prof. Asher Wolinsky Report by Prof. Yoram Weiss 3. Short biographical sketch of Prof. Dirk Obbink Report by Prof. Benjamin Isaac Receives Honoray Doctorate from Katholieke University, Leuven, Belgium 4. Challenges and New Horizons in Physics Report of Prof. Stephen Hawking's visit
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5. Short biographical sketch of Prof. Marc Shell Report by Prof. Hana Wirth-Nesher Stutter, book review by Harvard University Press Polio and its Aftermath, book review by Harvard University Press Polio and its Aftermath The Paralysis of Culture, book review by Christopher J. Rutty
13 16 17 18 19
6. Short biographical sketch of Prof. Bernard Lewis Report by Prof. Asher Susser Summary of articles: "Orthodoxy and Heresy in Middle East Religions" and "Islam, the West and the Jews" 7. Short biographical sketch of Prof. David Ruderman Two Reports by Prof. David Ruderman, Part I and Part II Review of article: "The Impact of Early Modern Jewish Thought on the Eighteenth Century: A challenge to the Notion of the Sephardi Mystique"
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8. Short biographical sketch of Prof. Dov Jaron Report by Prof. Ofer Barnea 9. Short biographical sketch of Prof. David Harbater Report by Prof. Moshe Jarden Section of the Citation, 1995 Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Algebra
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Professor AMNON YARIV is a Sackler Institute Member at the Mortimer and Raymond
Sackler Institute of Advanced Studies. Prof. Yariv is the Thomas G. Myers Professor of Electrical
Engineering and Applied Physics at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California.
He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, U.S. National Academy of Sciences,
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Prof. Yariv is a recipient of the Ives Medal (American
Optical Society), Quantum Electronics Award (IEEE), Harvey Prize (Technion), and Pender Prize
(University of Pennsylvania). He was the Chairman of the Board and founder of ORTEL Corporation
and is the co-founder of a number of existing companies. Prof. Yariv is one of the worlds leading
experts in Quantum Electronics. His various texts on this subject are standard basic sources for the
theory and applications of linear and nonlinear optics, lasers, quantum optics, and optical
communication.
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Professor Amnon Yariv
Report by Dr. Jacob Scheuer
School of Electrical Engineering Fleischman Faculty of Engineering
We would like to thank the Mortimer and Raymond Sackler Institute of Advanced Studies for
the opportunity to host Prof. Amnon Yariv in the School of Electrical Engineering during the period
from October 19 November 19, 2006.
During his visit, Prof. Yariv delivered a colloquium (November 2) in the department of
Physical Electronics, entitled: "Master and Slaves Towards Phase Locking of Semiconductor
Lasers." The colloquium was well attended by Faculty and students from Tel Aviv University and
other academic institutes as well as by people from the High-Tech industry. The presentation raised
much interest and stimulated many discussions.
As in previous years, Prof. Yariv met with many faculty members and students and granted
them with his very helpful guidance and scientific advice.
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Summary of talk delivered by Amnon Yariv Coherent Combination of Semiconductor MOPA Lasers Using Optical Phase Lock Loops
Abstract: Two 1W semiconductor MOPA lasers are phase-locked to a -3dBm master laser using Optical Phase Lock Loops. Coherent power combination and individual phase control of the MOPAs with a RF phase shifter are demonstrated. @2006 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: (140.2010) Diode laser arrays; (030.1640) Coherence
Coherent power combination of a large number of light emitters will lead to high power, high brightness and steerable laser systems [1, 2]. Coherent diode laser systems are promising candidates for many applications since diode lasers are extremely small and efficient compared to fiber lasers and solid state lasers. However, diode lasers are generally very noisy and require a high bandwidth feedback loop to be phase-locked with low residual phase noise [3]. Recently we have reported the coherent power addition of two commercial DFB lasers using heterodyne optical phase-locked loops [4]. In this paper we report the coherent power addition of two high power (1W) semiconductor Master Oscillator Power Amplifier (MOPA) lasers by phase locking them to a low power (-3dBm) master laser. Individual phase control of the MOPAs is also demonstrated using a RF phase shifter.
Fig. 1. Experimental setup for coherent power addition of two QPC MOPA lasers phase locked to the same reference laser signal.
The experimental setup is depicted in Fig. 1. Two 1W QPC MOPAs (QPC ES-102) are phase-locked to the Agilent 81640A tunable laser (-3dBm) at an offset of 1.48GHz. An Aided Acquisition Circuit (AAC) is implemented to increase the tracking range from +/- 9MHz to +/- 1GHz. The PD2 is used to monitor the lock status of the two MOPAs. The two MOPAs outputs are also mixed and detected using PD1, from which the mutual coherence between the two MOPAs is obtained and measured. Fig. 2(a) shows the power spectrum of the locked beat signal of a single OPLL. Fig. 2(b) shows the temporal dependence of the combined signal. When both MOPAs are locked, the power is coherently added and PD1 gives a DC output signal which varies slowly with time due to the variation of optical length in the fiber. The measured RMS phase error between the two lasers is about 22 degrees.
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Fig. 2. (a) Measured power spectrum for a 1.48GHz locked beat signal. (b). Variation of the combined power signal as a function of
time. One of the advantages of the heterodyne OPLL scheme is the ability to control the optical phases of the individual slave lasers by controlling the offset RF signal phase using a RF phase shifter. Figure 3(a) is the schematic diagram of the phase control of each individual MOPA. Fig. 3(b) compares the output waveforms of the two independent OPLLs when both loops are in lock. We use the RF phase shifter to control the relative phase between the two OPLLs output signals as seen in the Lissajou curves shown in Fig. 3(c)-(e). The extension of this phase programmability to phase-locked diode laser arrays may, in the future, enable high speed beam scanning and adaptive focusing/wavefront correction.
Signal generator
OPLL 1
OPLL 2
~
LPF
LPF
Channel 1
Channel 2
1.48 GHz1.48 GHz + 100 MHz
(a) (b)
(c) (d) (e)
Signal generator
OPLL 1
OPLL 2
~
LPFChannel 1
Channel 2LPF
1.48 GHz1.48 GHz + 100 MHz
(a) (b)
(c) (d) (e)
Fig. 3. (a) Schematic diagram of the phase control of the individual MOPA. (b). Comparison of the output waveforms of the two independent OPLLs. (c)-(d). Lissajou curves reflecting the control of the relative phase between the two OPLLs output signals. References [1] A. Yariv, Dynamic analysis of the semiconductor laser as a current-controlled oscillator in the optical phased-lock loop: applications, Opt. Lett. 30, 2191-2193 (2005). [2] S.J. Augst, et al., Coherent beam combining and phase noise measurements of ytterbium fiber amplifiers, Opt. Lett 29, 474-476 (2004). [3] L.N. Langley, et al, Packaged Semiconductor Laser Optical Phase-Locked Loop (OPLL) for Photonic Generation, Processing and Transmission of Microwave Signals, IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., 47, 1257-1264 (1999) [4] W. Liang, et al, Coherent Combining of Two Semiconductor Lasers Using Optical Phase-Lock Loops (OPLLs), Opt. Lett. 32, 370-372 (2007)
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Professor ASHER WOLINSKY, Sackler Scholar 2005/2006. Professor of Economics,
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois since 1988. He has been the Alfred W. Chase
Professor from 1998-2002 and the Gordon Fulcher Professor since 2002. Prof. Wolinsky received
his B.S. in Mathematics and Economics in 1975 from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his
M.A in Economics, M.S. in Operations Research in 1979, and his Ph.D in Economics (with a minor
in O.R.) in 1980 from Stanford University.
Prof. Wolinsky previously worked at the Economic Research Center, Bell Laboratories
from 1980-1981; Economics Department of Hebrew University of Jerusalem as a Lecturer from
1981-1986 and Senior Lecturer from 1986-1988; and Visiting Faculty in the Economics
Department of the University of Pennsylvania from 1986-1988. His professional activities include
Fellow of the Econometric Society since 1991; member of the following Editorial Boards:
Econometrica since 1992, Games and Economic Behavior since 1992, Economic Theory from
1992-1997, and the Journal of Economic Theory since 1993. He has published over 40
professional articles.
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Professor Asher Wolinsky
Report by Prof. Yoram Weiss
School of Economics
Gordon Faculty of Social Sciences
Professor Asher Wolinsky visited our department twice during the academic year 2006-2007
for about three weeks each time. In both visits, he taught classes in our PhD program on the
economics of information. Students and members of our school have also interacted with him
personally. Overall, we found his visit very valuable and I would like to thank the Mortimer and
Raymond Sackler Institute for its help in arranging this visit.
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Professor DIRK OBBINK was a Sackler Lecturer in December 2006. He has been a Professor
of Classical Studies and the Ludwig Koenan Collegiate Professor of Papyrology at the University of
Michigan in Ann Arbor since 2003, and simultaneously a University Lecturer in Papyrology and
Greek Literature at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom since 1995, and fellow and tutor
in Greek at the Christ Church in Oxford since 1995. His inventing the original method for
reconstructing the carbonized scrolls from Herculaneum in 1987 is an outstanding achievement. Prof.
Obbink's areas of specialization are Greek and Latin Literature, Ancient Religion and Philosophy, and
Papyrology.
Prof. Obbink was born in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1957. He received his B.A. in 1978 from the
University of Nebraska, his Ph.D. in 1987 from Stanford University and his M.A.(by resolution) in
1995 from the University of Oxford. He was also an Admiral in the Navy of the State of Nebraska in
2002. Some of his outstanding academic achievements include: recipient of the MacArthur Fellow in
2001, Fellow of the Center for the Advanced Study of the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford University
from 2006-07, Co-founder and Trustee of The Herculaneum Society (with R. L. Fowler and N. G.
Wilson) in 2004, Founder and Curator of the Archivum Societatis Herculanensis (ASH) in 2004, and
ITC Officer for creation of 'Papyrus Editor', 'Fragment Retreival System', and 'Virtual Library for Lost
Books' by the ZAGREUS Project, University of Michigan/University of Oxford.
Prof. Obbink's editorial appointments include: General Editor, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri
(Egypt Exploration Society, London, Greco-Roman Memoirs) since 2002 with N. Gonis and P.J.
Parsons; Member of the Editorial Board, Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica (Florence-based Pasquali-
Vitelli-Gigante Classics journal and Beihefte) since 2003 with A. Barchiesi, G. Guidorizzi, S.
Stephens, D. Feeney, S. Hinds, and Ph. Hardie; and Editor with A.R. Dyck of Studies in Classics
(Routledge).
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Professor Dirk Obbink
Report by Prof. Benjamin Isaac
Fred and Helen Lessing Professor of Ancient History Chair, Department of Classics Entin Faculty of Humanities
Professor Obbink is a highly distinguished classicist, papyrologist and ancient historian who
has achieved the rare distinction of a dual appointment as an American University Professor
(Collegiate Professor of Papyrology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) and Fellow and Tutor in the
University of Oxford (Christ Church College). Among these must be mentioned, first of all, his work
on the library in the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, a huge library containing lost works of the
Greek classics that was totally carbonized at the time of the destruction of Herculaneum by the
Vesuvius in the year 79. Prof. Obbink invented an original method for reconstructing these carbonized
scrolls from Herculaneum and then organized an international project aimed at treating the scrolls and
deciphering them. He has received a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship because for this major
contribution. He is, however, far more than a technical innovator; he is known as a magisterial
interpreter of the texts he thus deciphers.
Professor Obbink came to Tel Aviv for a two-week visit as a lecturer supported by the Sackler
Institute. In those days he delivered a public lecture: Vanishing Conjecture: the Recovery of Lost
Books from Aristotle to Eco. He conducted a seminar: The Lost Library from Herculaneum and
met with our advanced students who profited a good deal from this opportunity -- and, I may add,
impressed Obbink with their lively intelligence, which clearly means something for someone used to
students trained at the best institutions in the US and the UK.
This visit was an important event because it gave Tel Aviv University an opportunity to meet a
major scholar of international fame and formed the beginning of what clearly is going to be a fertile
contact in future.
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Honorary Doctorate for Prof. Dirk Obbink Katholieke University, Leuven, Belgium, May 16, 2007; Prof. Dr. Marc Huys, Promotor
Rector, Colleagues, Ladies and gentlemen,
Although Professor Dirk Obbink is an American citizen and was born in Nebraska, his name
unmistakably betrays his European roots. Today, Dirk Obbink is still combining his diverse activities
at Oxford with his Professorship in Classical Studies and Papyrology at the University of Michigan.
Somehow the combination of the best of American and European culture is characteristic of the whole
of Obbink's remarkable career. I am fully aware that it is hazardous to connect personal qualities with
the particular character of a nation or culture, but if we think of positive qualities uniquely combined
in the personality of a cosmopolitan scholar, it is perhaps legitimate to do so.
Dirk Obbink studied classics and papyrology at the University of Nebraska and the University
of Stanford where he obtained his PhD with a work on the treatise On Piety by the Greek philosopher
Philodemus, which has survived only in a carbonized papyrus roll discovered in a Roman villa at
Herculaneum. The subject no doubt has a European flavor but the choice of a usually neglected
philosophical text, which was heavily damaged and had to be reconstructed with patient philological
labour, also required a more 'American' pioneering spirit. A brief and simplifying account of the
evidence with which he had to work for his admirable edition of this text, will give some indication of
the challenges implied by his own rigorous methodology and of the reason why his work deserves to
be counted among the greatest philological achievements of our generation.
The papyrus roll containing this Epicurean treatise was one of those covered by the eruption of
Vesuvius in the year 79. These carbonized scrolls were so distorted that the original excavators at the
end of the 18th century initially mistook them for lumps of charcoal. According to the best practice of
the time the charred outer layers of the roll were cut through until the uncarbonized inner layers came
to light. So the outer halves had to be destroyed in order to be read but this was only done after having
made faithful copies of each layer before peeling it away. Usually the act of revealing one layer
destroyed its predecessor but when our scroll with the treatise On Piety was cut open, the two halves
were for some reason given different catalogue numbers and transcribed separately. In the beginning
of the 19th century, after a research stay by the reverend John Hayter, several fragments and some
apographs of the inner half of the papyrus mysteriously disappeared: they are now kept in the Bodleian
Library at Oxford. Since then the other half of the original roll was believed to be a separate document.
Several editions of On Piety appeared during the 19th and 20th century, but because the editors were
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not able to reconstruct the connection between the two separated halves of the original roll, their
editions contributed very little to the understanding of Philodemus' reflections on this subject.
Obbink's edition, then, was the first to give incontrovertible proof of a physical join between
two halves of the same text column that was divided between the Oxford apograph and its Italian
counterpart. Thanks to Obbink's brilliant and meticulous detective work nearly every column can now
be matched with its successor and predecessor in the other half of the roll.
However, such philological-technical acrobatics did not completely satisfy Obbink's searching
spirit: Probably because it did not answer the key question why the library of this wealthy Roman villa
owner consisted largely of the writings of a relatively obscure Greek philosopher. Therefore, Obbink
embarked on the interpretation of his reconstructed but still mutilated text, which appears to be so
densely argued and esoteric that it would be difficult to translate even if it had come down from
antiquity in perfect condition. Thanks to this second phase of his meticulous philological decoding we
now have a better understanding of Hellenistic philosophy, in particular in the great schools of
Stoicism and Epicureanism, at the moment of its reception by the Roman intellectual elite.
For example, one fragment of the reconstructed papyrus text allowed him to explain the ancient
tradition that Epicurus was an atheist, which is definitely untrue, although he rejected any divine
providence or teleology. Moreover, Obbink demonstrated how Philodemus' texts shed new light on the
doctrine of the Stoic philosopher Diogenes of Babylon, who determined the orientation of Stoicism in
the late Hellenistic period, as well as Cicero's dependence on Philodemus when he criticized Stoic
theology in his "On the Nature of the Gods". This brings us to the unique contribution of Obbink's
innovative research to our knowledge of the great Latin literature of the first century BC. For students
of Latin poets such as Lucretius, Horace and Virgil, and of Roman intellectual culture of this Golden
Age, it has now become impossible to neglect Philodemus as a source of inspiration.
Obbink's broad vision and interdisciplinary approach led him to take up the role of editor and
co-editor of several outstanding collections of essays by different scholars. His well known collected
volumes on ancient Greek magic and religion, on the treatment of genre in Hellenistic poetry, on
Philodemus' connections with Latin poetry and with the intellectual and religious climate of the New
Testament world, opened new horizons for the history of Western thought by focusing on the critical
juncture between Hellenistic religion and philosophy and Roman culture.
Needless to say, Obbink's groundbreaking work has drawn international acclaim. The
prestigious John and Catherine MacArthur Foundation honoured him with a well-funded fellowship to
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continue his work and he was offered several academic posts by the best universities. After an assistant
professorship in Columbia University he was appointed in 1995 at the University of Oxford as a
Lecturer in Papyrology and Greek literature. In addition, since 2003 he holds an appointment as
Ludwig Koenen Collegiate Professor in Papyrology at the University of Michigan. On the other side
he declined professorships with tenure at Duke University and New York University. Is his apparent
preference for Oxford as his main working place again to be explained by his attachment to Europe
and to its centuries-old tradition of in-depth learning? At any rate he could develop his talents there as
the curator of one of the world's most important papyrus collections and he did so by infusing the
Oxyrhynchus papyri project with a rather American dynamism and audacity.
First of all he set up several projects for the application of innovative technology to the old
treasurers. This implied the digitalization of the complete collection as well as the invitation of a
specialized team of Brigham Young University to do exploratory work on the papyri with their multi-
spectral imaging technique. The promising initial results are demonstrated by Obbink's re-edition,
among others, of a fragment of the Greek poet Archilochus, which offers a much more complete
restored text and translation thanks to the new multi-spectral images of the papyrus. In the years to
come similar successes are to be expected for other papyrus fragments of famous Greek poets. Another
aspect of rather American open-mindedness may be illustrated by the following anecdote: when we
tried to fix the date of the present ceremony, he was anxious not to let it interfere with an interview he
had promised to Der Spiegel. This keenness towards the popularization of the results of his research,
often but unjustifiably called vulgarization, is devoid of any sensationalism but springs from a
profound awareness that the study of ancient culture has an important message for the world of today
and that it is our task to bring this to light. Every student who has had the privilege to enjoy his
teaching and guidance during a stay in Oxford, has experienced what Dirk Obbink is really looking for
through hours of painstaking philological research and through his penetrating study of ancient
religion and philosophy: humanity and wisdom.
Ladies and gentlemen, Prof. Dirk Obbink has given us a recipe for keeping classics alive in an
era of globalization, i.e. to approach the ancient texts with a combination of unconditional respect for
philological tradition with the experimental application of modern technology, and to communicate to
a wide audience this philological exploration journey towards the roots of our humanity. Therefore it is
more than appropriate that he is being proposed today for an honorary doctorate at our university.
Reference: http://www.arts.kuleuven.be/onderzoek/laudatios/LaudatioObbink.pdf
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http://www.arts.kuleuven.be/onderzoek/laudatios/LaudatioObbink.pdf
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Challenges and New Horizon in Physics
Prof. Stephen Hawking Cambridge University
Theoretical physicist and best-selling author Prof. Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University
was guest of honor at an event on "Challenges and New Horizons in Physics" hosted by the Raymond
and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences, the Mortimer and Raymond Sackler Institute of
Advanced Studies and the School of Physics and Astronomy. The December 12th visit was part of an
eight-day tour of Israel organized by the British Council that included a meeting with Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert. Prof. Hawking said he came to Israel because "it has always been a center of excellence
in science."
Along with a briefing on Tel Aviv University's physics research, Prof. Hawking also heard
about the university's dedicated chair for the research of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease,
which has paralyzed him since age 21. TAU also has Israel's leading research group in
neurodegenerative diseases.
HE Mr. Tom Phillips, British Ambassador presented greetings. The following distinguished
faculty members spoke: Prof. Itamar Rabinovich, President about the Academy in Israel; Prof. Yaron
Oz, Head, School of Physics and Astronomy about challenges and new horizons in physics; Prof.
Hagai Netzer about new horizons in astronomy, and Prof. Michael Kozlov about new horizons in
biophysics.
Source: TAU, Tel Aviv University Review, Spring 2007, p. 22
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Professor MARC SHELL, Sackler Scholar 2006/2007 and 2007/2008. Prof. Shell, a John D.
and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellow, is the Irving Babbitt Professor of Comparative Literature and
Professor of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. His administrative duties at Harvard have included chairing the Literature
Concentration and the Department of Comparative Literature. He is Chairman elect of the Ethnic
Studies Program and Co-Director and Founder (with Prof. Werner Sollers), The Longfellow Institute
for the comparative study of non-English languages and literatures of what is now in the United States
since 1995. He is also Professor in the university's graduate program in History of American
Civilization. His other academic activities include: Co-Directs the Grand Manan Field School in
Canada; Co-Director and Founder (with Prof. Joo Carlos Espada, University of Lisbon), Program in
Literature and Politics in Cascais, Portugal since 2003; Co-Director (with Prof. Gregory Nagy) and
Founder, The Harvard Study Program in Olympia, Greece (new summer program in Comparative
Cultural Studies) since 2001; Member Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital General Committee since
2000; Chair, Harvard's Interfaculty Initiative for Disabilities Studies; and Co-Director and Founder
(with Dr. Jean-Marie Thiveaud), Programme Finance, Ethique, Confiance, a division of Association
d'conomie financire in Paris from 1993-1998.
Marc Shell was born in Qubec in 1947. As an undergraduate, Professor Shell studied English
at McGill University, Montral and History at Trinity College, Cambridge. He received his BA in
English Language & Literature and also in Social Thought & Institutions from Stanford University in
1968. He received his MA in 1972 and his PhD in 1975 in Comparative Literature from Yale
University. Before going to Harvard, he taught in the Department of English at The State University
of New York in Buffalo from 1974-1986 and headed the Department of Comparative Literature at the
University of Massachusetts in Amherst from 1986-1991.
Professor Shell's particular theoretical and thematic interests include five interconnected
research areas: (1) money & language, (2) nationhood, politics & language difference, (3) kinship,
(4) non-English literatures of America, and (5) medical & disability studies. Descriptions follow.
Money & Language: Prof. Shell is one of the forerunners, along with Jean-Jospeh Goux and others,
of the literary-critical movement that has been dubbed 'New Economic Criticism.' His contributions to
the study of relations between linguistic and literary economics are encompassed in several influential
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http://www.fas.harvard.edu/%7Elitconc/http://www.fas.harvard.edu/%7Elitconc/http://www.fas.harvard.edu/%7Ecomplit/http://www.fas.harvard.edu/%7Ecesh/http://www.fas.harvard.edu/%7Ecesh/http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/%7Emshell/Grand%20Manan%20Field%20School%202007.htmhttp://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~mshell/#1EconAesth#1EconAesthhttp://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~mshell/#2NationhoodLanguage#2NationhoodLanguagehttp://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~mshell/#KinshipStudies#KinshipStudieshttp://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~mshell/#4LOWINUS#4LOWINUShttp://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~mshell/#5Disability#5Disability
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books, including: Art & Money (Chicago UP 1995); Money, Language, and Thought: Literary and
Philosophical Economics from the Medieval to the Modern Era (UC Berkeley 1982); and The
Economy of Literature (Johns Hopkins UP 1978); and forthcoming works in this area include the
following: Wampum and the Origin of North American Money (Illinois UP 2007) and The Painting
in the Trash Bin: Otis Kaye and the Perplexities of Art (Chicago UP 2008).
Shell is co-curator and co-editor, with Jrgen Harten, of Das fnfte ElementGeld oder Kunst
(Dsseldorf 2000), with its large, interpretative dictionary-style catalog. He is also co-editor, with
Jean-Marie Thiveaud, of Collection conomie de la littrature (Paris); the collection's first volume
presents the poet Paul Claudel's writings from the time that he was French Ambassador to the United
StatesLa Crise: Correspondence diplomatique Amrique, 1927-1932, pref. Erik Izralewicz (Paris:
Mtaili-Transition 1993).
Nationhood, Politics & Language Difference: Work in the area includes Children of the Earth:
Literature, Politics, and Nationhood (Oxford UP 1994) as well as several studies of bilingualism and
language rights in Qubec, New Brunswick, and elsewhere; and his book Language Wars
(forthcoming); Grand Manan; or, A Short History of North America is in press (McGill-Queens UP
forthcoming 2007). Together with the political philosopher Professor Susan Meld Shell, he is
completing a relevant book on Alexis de Tocqueville and the prison systems of the United States.
Kinship Studies: Professor Shells writings about kinship and the European Renaissance include
Elizabeth's Glass; With "The Glass of the Sinful Soul" (1544) by Elizabeth I; and "Epistle
Dedicatory" & "Conclusion" (1548) by John Bale (Nebraska UP 1994); and The End of
Kinship:"Measure for Measure," Incest, and the Ideal of Universal Siblinghood (Stanford UP 1988).
Professor Shell, who has authored many essays about the social institution of family pet-hood,
sometimes co-teaches in this area with members of the faculty of the Tufts School of Veterinary
Medicine.
Non-English Languages and Literatures of the United States: Marc Shell, who is also Professor
of American Civilization at Harvard, is editor of American Babel: American Literatures from Abnaki
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http://www.amazon.com/Children-Earth-Literature-Politics-Nationhood/dp/0195068645/sr=1-7/qid=1172447120/ref=sr_1_7/103-0823637-7724633?ie=UTF8&s=bookshttp://www.amazon.com/Elizabeths-Glass-Elizabeth-Dedicatory-Conclusion/dp/0803242166/sr=1-11/qid=1172447208/ref=sr_1_11/103-0823637-7724633?ie=UTF8&s=bookshttp://www.amazon.com/End-Kinship-Measure-Universal-Siblinghood/dp/0801852420http://www.amazon.com/End-Kinship-Measure-Universal-Siblinghood/dp/0801852420http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/SHEAME.html
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to Zuni (Harvard UP 2002). He co-edits The Longfellow Series, which publishes books at four
presses. He is also co-editor (with Werner Sollors) of The Multilingual Anthology of the United
States (New York UP 2000), with its facing-page format and eighteen languages; editor of Mark
Twain's Multilingual "Jumping Frog" (Johns Hopkins UP forthcoming). His earliest publication in
this area was French-Canadian/American Literary Relations (French Canada Studies Institute,
McGill University 1967), and more recently is Grand Manan: or, A Short History of North America
(McGill-Queens 2008 forthcoming).
Medical & Disability studies: Professor Shell is the author of two books in this area. Both books
include literary study and film work: Stutter (Harvard UP 2005) and Polio and Its Aftermath: The
Paralysis of Culture (Harvard UP 2006). Professor Shells teaching in this area often includes
faculty members from other schools. Paralysis and Aesthetics is taught with Prof. Judith Palfrey of
the Harvard Medical School and Childrens Hospital Boston. Language Disorders and the Literary
Tradition was taught with Prof. Evangeline Stefanakis of the Harvard Graduate School of Education
and the Laboratory in Child Development at Tufts University.
Professor Shell was Chair of Harvards Interfaculty Initiative for Disabilities Studies from 2000 to
2003. For the last seven years, he has served on the General Committee of Spaulding Rehabilitation
Hospital, Boston. His work includes raising funds, consulting with architecture firms about a new
hydrotherapeutic faculty with six pools, and participation, with Dr. Julie Silver of the Harvard
Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, at the International Polio Center of Excellence,
Framingham, MA.
Prof. Shell works in a wide variety of languages and literatures including: English, French,
German, Latin, Hebrew (Biblical), Greek (Classical), Spanish and Portuguese. He has published
articles in scholarly journals and magazines and as well as chapters in books. His work has appeared
in translation in some dozen languages.
Source: Prof. Marc Shell's Home page: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~mshell/ and Harvard Magazine
Jan-Feb. 2006, John Harvard's journal section: http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/010692.html
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http://www.amazon.com/Multilingual-Anthology-American-Literature-Translations/dp/0814797539http://www.amazon.com/Multilingual-Anthology-American-Literature-Translations/dp/0814797539http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/SHESTU.htmlhttp://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/SHEPOL.htmlhttp://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/%7Emshell/http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/010692.html
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Professor Marc Shell
Report by Prof. Hana Wirth-Nesher
Samuel L. and Perry Haber Chair on the Study of the Jewish Experience in the United States Director, Goldreich Family Institute for Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture
Department of English and American Studies Entin Faculty of Humanities
Professor Marc Shell of the Departments of Comparative Literature, English and American
Literature (and most recently also on the faculty of the School of Medicine) at Harvard University,
delivered a lecture on January 4, 2007, on the topic "The Polio Folio: Medicine, Literature, and
Paralysis." His lecture was based on his extensive research on polio that found its expression most
recently in a book published by Harvard University Press entitled, Polio and Its Aftermath: The
Paralysis of Culture. His lecture provided a sweeping and original overview of the link between
paralysis and stuttering from ancient civilizations to our own in relation to medical theories,
philosophy, literature, and the arts (including Freudian models and other psychoanalytic paradigms).
His cultural analyses of paralysis resulting from polio (in historical, medical, sociological and artistic
terms) formed the basis of a major exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. shortly
before his visit. This lecture, and the meetings that he held with faculty members and students,
provided the department with an outstanding resource person for the duration of his visit. Prof. Shell
was scheduled to return in June, but due to illness in his family, he has postponed the second part of
his visit to Tel Aviv University for the spring of 2008. His visit came during the first year of the
English Department's new track in American Studies, and his exploration of the historical and cultural
frame for understanding polio and its aftermath in the United States was particularly relevant.
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Stutter
Marc Shell Reviewed by Harvard University Press
One person can't help stuttering. The other can't help laughing. And in the way one bodily
betrayal of better intentions mirrors the other, we find ourselves in the gray area where mind and body
connect--and, at the damnedest moments, disconnect. In a book that explores the phenomenon of
stuttering from its practical and physical aspects to its historical profile to its existential implications,
Marc Shell plumbs the depths of this murky region between will and flesh, intention and expression,
idea and word. Looking into the difficulties encountered by people who stutter--as do fifty million
worldwide--Shell shows that, however solitary stutterers may be in their quest for normalcy, they share
a kinship with many other speakers, both impeded and fluent.
Stutter takes us back to a time when stuttering was believed to be "diagnosis-induced," then on
to the complex mix of physical and psychological causes that were later discovered. Ranging from
cartoon characters like Porky Pig to cultural icons like Marilyn Monroe, from Moses to Hamlet, Shell
reveals how stuttering in literature plays a role in the formation of tone, narrative progression, and
character. He considers such questions as: Why does stuttering disappear when the speaker chants?
How does singing ease the verbal tics of Tourette's Syndrome? How do stutterers cope with the
inexpressible, the unspeakable?
Written by someone who has himself struggled with stuttering all his life, this provocative and
wide-ranging book shows that stuttering has implications for myriad types of expression and helps to
define what it means to be human.
Source: Harvard University Press, Website: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/SHESTU.html
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http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/SHESTU.html
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Polio and Its Aftermath The Paralysis of Culture
Marc Shell Reviewed by Harvard University Press
It was not long ago that scientists proclaimed victory over polio, the dread disease of the 1950s.
More recently polio resurfaced, not conquered at all, spreading across the countries of Africa. As we
once again face the specter of this disease, along with other killers like AIDS and SARS, this powerful
book reminds us of the personal cost, the cultural implications, and the historical significance of one of
modern humanity's deadliest biological enemies. In Polio and Its Aftermath Marc Shell, himself a
victim of polio, offers an inspired analysis of the disease. Part memoir, part cultural criticism and
history, part meditation on the meaning of disease, Shell's work combines the understanding of a
medical researcher with the sensitivity of a literary critic. He deftly draws a detailed yet broad picture
of the lived experience of a crippling disease as it makes it way into every facet of human existence.
Polio and Its Aftermath conveys the widespread panic that struck as the disease swept the
world in the mid-fifties. It captures an atmosphere in which polio vied with the Cold War as the
greatest cause of unrest in North America--and in which a strange and often debilitating uncertainty
was one of the disease's salient but least treatable symptoms. Polio particularly afflicted the young, and
Shell explores what this meant to families and communities. And he reveals why, in spite of the
worldwide relief that greeted Jonas Salk's vaccine as a miracle of modern science, we have much more
to fear from polio now than we know.
Source: Harvard University Press, Website: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/SHEPOL.html
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http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/SHEPOL.html
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Marc Shell. Polio and Its Aftermath: The Paralysis of Culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2005. 336 pp., illus. Christopher J. Rutty, Ph.D.Health Heritage Research Services, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6S 3E9.
Marc Shell, a professor of English and of comparative literature at Harvard, has assembled one
of the most original histories of a disease, and especially of polio, that I have read. It is based not only
on his personal experience as a "polio," but more significantly upon a massive collection of published
and unpublished polio narratives collected from across North America and beyond. Moreover, he has
utilized a vast array of literary, artistic, and cinematic sources to illuminate the deep infiltration the
polio experience made into the broader culture during the preSalk vaccine era.
This thirty-year period, from the mid-1920s through the mid-1950s, when polio epidemics
became increasingly widespread across the industrialized world, was also a period when the electronic
mediamotion pictures, radio, and televisioncame into their own. Shell argues that polio influenced
"the formation of these media as much as they influenced the perception of polio on the part of terrified
people and nation-states" (p. 1). After the uncertainties of worsening epidemics and then the "total
victory" declared with the arrival of the Salk vaccine on 12 April 1955, polio quickly became a
forgotten disease.
The dramatic success of the Salk vaccine not only represented the iconic "conquest of polio,"
but also heralded "a brave new world of universal health and safety" (p. 1), not only from polio but
perhaps from all diseases. However, this "purely prophylactic approach to polio" (p. 2), as Shell
stresses, deferred important studies into the science of what caused and still causes diseases like polio,
as well as investigations into the broader social sciences of such diseases. Indeed, the long search to
understand the nature of polio and the effects it had on the bodies of individual "polios" and on bodies
politic abruptly ended in 1955. At the same time, the dramatic success of polio vaccines created a
general assumption that similar victories were likely against other plagues. Such assumptions, as Shell
notes, ignored the "historically idiosyncratic combination of public and private philanthropy that had
supported American polio research and treatment" (p. 2).
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Fundamentally, this "total victory" against polio left the many thousands of "polios" it affected
all but forgotten, to struggle, often alone, with not only the original paralytic effects of the poliovirus,
but also the increasingly debilitating physical and psychological challenges of post-polio syndrome.
Shells use of the term "polios" reflects the fact that, unlike almost any other disease, those affected by
polio can never really put it in the past; polio stays with them, long after the original period of
infection, consciously or subconsciously shaping the rest of their lives.
Given this uniquely dichotomous historical situation, Shells primary goal is to unearth the
highly variable personal narratives of a large number of polios, including his own, and analyze them
within the context of the literary and visual arts produced during the polio epidemic era, highlighting
the many direct and indirect references to polio and its effects. Shell next shifts to a detailed
examination of how polio and the particular problems of paralysis were integrated into motion
pictures. Cinematography was the most significant cultural development of the twentieth century, with
its initial concern for "defining the problem of stasis (paralysis) in still photography and then making it
kinetic in some way" (p. 11). Shell identifies some 150 movies with some reference to polio or
paralysis, the major example of which is Alfred Hitchcocks 1954 classic, Rear Window. For Shell, this
movie carefully balances between being about polio and not about polio, which was "an avoidance that
was also central to its time" (p. 12).
Shells book covers a lot of fertile ground in a unique and interesting way. His enthusiasm for
his subject is infectious, although his enormous breadth of knowledge of the literary, visual, and
cinematic culture of the period can be a bit overwhelming to the general reader. However, as a fellow
polio historian, I certainly appreciated his original approach to the subject, particularly when much of
the recent historiography of polio has been limited to retelling the familiar Salk vaccine story, with
minimal attention given to the polios for whom the vaccine came too late.
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 2006 61(2):232-234; doi:10.1093/jhmas/jrj030
The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press. Website: http://jhmas.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/61/2/232
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http://jhmas.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/61/2/232
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Professor BERNARD LEWIS, Sackler Scholar 2005/2006. Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near
Eastern Studies, Emeritus, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey is a Sackler Institute Member
at the Mortimer and Raymond Sackler Institute of Advanced Studies from 1980/1981.
Born in London, Professor Lewis received the B.A. degree in 1936 from the University of London
and the Ph.D. degree from the same university in 1939. In 1940-41, he served in the British Army
(RAC and IC) and from 1941 to 1945 was attached to a department of the Foreign Office. He was
Professor of History of the Near and Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the
University of London (1949-1974) He was appointed to the Cleveland E. Dodge Chair of Near
Eastern Studies at Princeton University in September 1974 and was named a long-term member of the
Institute for Advanced Study in the same year. Professor Lewis retired from Princeton and the IAS in
1986.
His publications include: The Political Language of Islam (1988), Race and Slavery in the Middle
East: an Historical Enquiry (1990), Islam and the West (1993), The Shaping of the Modern Middle
East (1994), Cultures in Conflict (1994), The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2000 Years
(1995), The Multiple Identities of the Middle East (1998), A Middle East Mosaic: Fragments of life,
letters and history (2000), and Music of a Distant Drum: Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish and
Hebrew Poems. His works have been translated into more than twenty-five languages. His most recent
books, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (2002), The Crisis of Islam:
Holy War and Unholy Terror (2003), From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East (2004)
was published by Oxford University Press, New York.
Professor Lewis has lectured in numerous countries including Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand,
Japan, Canada, Mexico, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan,
Israel, Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Oman, Morocco and several European countries.
Professor Lewis holds fifteen honorary doctorates and is a Fellow of the British Academy, a
member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society, a
corresponding member of the Institut de France, etc.
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Professor Bernard Lewis
Report by Prof. Assaf Susser
Fred and Helen Lessing Professor of Ancient History Chair, Department of Classics Entin Faculty of Humanities
Under the sponsorship of the Mortimer and Raymond Sackler Institute of Advanced Studies,
Professor Bernard Lewis, Professor Emeritus at Princeton University, returned once again to the
Moshe Dayan Center to meet with faculty, advised students and lecture to the public. Professor Lewis
held seminars for outstanding students in the Department of Middle Eastern History, for graduate
students in the School of History and for overseas students in the special masters program in Middle
Eastern Studies.
Professor Lewis delivered two public lectures. The first, entitled "Orthodoxy and Heresy in
Middle East Religions" was delivered on January 8, 2007. Professor Lewis spoke about Judaism,
Islam, Christianity and the influence of religion in Iran. The encounter between the Jews and Iran in
the Babylonian exile changed Judaism and gave it a messianism that it lacked before the exile. It was
from post-exilic Judaism that Christianity and later Islam developed. The concept of heresy had its
origins in Manichaeism, named after the Iranian Zoroastrian heretic Mani. He then used the concepts
of orthodoxy and heresy to examine the splits in Christianity and Islam and to compare them.
In the second lecture, given on January 25, Professor Lewis discussed "Islam, the West and
the Jews," examining the relationship between Christianity and Islam since the latter's founding. He
noted that there were conflicts in the Arab phase of Islam and later in the Ottoman phase. The third
phase is now taking place and the battleground is both in the Middle East and in Europe, where
millions of Muslims now live. He expressed doubt about the willingness of Europe to stand up to
Islamic fundamentalism. Jews traditionally fared better under Islam than under Christianity, but the
introduction of modern anti-Semitism into the Middle East, combined with anti-Zionism, has
worsened relations significantly. Both lectures, as always, were attended by capacity audiences of
over 600 people.
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IAS 997-07 BERNARD LEWIS Orthodoxy and Heresy in Middle East Religions
IAS 998-07 Islam, the West and the Jews
Princeton Prof. (Emeritus) Bernard Lewis gave two lectures during the first semester. His visit
was co-sponsored with the Mortimer and Raymond Sackler Institute of Advanced Studies. In his first
lecture, entitled: "Orthodoxy and Heresy in Middle East Religions" and delivered on January 8, 2007,
Lewis spoke about Judaism, Islam, Christianity and the influence of religion in Iran. The encounter
between the Jews and Iran in the Babylonian exile changed Judaism and gave it a messianism that it
lacked before the exile. It was from the post-exilic Judaism that Christianity and later Islam
developed. The concept of heresy had its origins in Manichaeism, named after the Iranian Zoroastrian
heretic Mani. He then used the concepts of orthodoxy and heresy to examine the spilts in Christianity
and Islam and to compare them.
In the second lecture, given on January 25, Lewis discussed "Islam, the West and the Jews,"
examining the relationship between Christianity and Islam since the latter's founding. He noted that
there were conflicts in the Arab phase of Islam and later in the Ottoman phase. The third phase is now
taking place and the battleground is both in the Middle East and in Europe, where millions of Mulisms
now live. He expressed doubt about the willingness of Europe to stand up to Islamic fundamentalism.
Jews traditionally fared better under Islam than under Christianity, but the introduction of modern anti-
Semitism into Middle East, combined with anti-Zionism, has worsened relations significantly.
Source: Bulletin, The Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, No. 45, Spring 2007, p. 5.
23
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Professor DAVID B. RUDERMAN, Sackler Scholar 2006/20067, 2008. Joseph Meyerhoff
Professor of Modern Jewish History and the Ella Darivoff Director of the Center for Advanced Judaic
Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
He is the author of The World of a Renaissance Jew: The Life and Thought of Abraham b.
Mordecai Farissol (Cincinnati, Ohio, Hebrew Union College Press, 1981), for which he received the
JWB National Book Award in Jewish History in l982; Kabbalah, Magic, and Science: The Cultural
Universe of a Sixteenth-Century Jewish Physician (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press,
1988); and A Valley of Vision: The Heavenly Journey of Abraham Ben Hananiah Yagel (Philadelphia,
Pa., University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990 and also published in Hebrew in 1997). He is co-author,
with William W. Hallo and Michael Stanislawski, of the two volume Heritage: Civilization and the
Jews Study Guide and Source Reader (New York, Praeger, 1984), prepared in conjunction with the
showing of the Public Television series of the same name. He has edited Essential Papers on Jewish
Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy (New York, New York University Press, 1992), Preachers
of the Italian Ghetto (Los Angeles and Berkeley, University of California Press, 1992), [with David
Myers] The Jewish Past Revisited: Reflections on Modern Jewish Historians (New Haven and
London, Yale University Press, 1998), and Cultural Intermediaries: Jewish Intellectuals in Early
Modern Italy [with Giuseppe Veltri] (Philadelphia, PA., University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). He
has also published Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven and
London, Yale University Press, 1995; revised paperback, Detroit, 2001) which has also appeared in
Italian and Hebrew versions. His book Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key: Anglo-Jewry's
Construction of Modern Jewish Thought published by Princeton University Press in 2000 won the
Koret Award for the best book in Jewish History in 2001. His forthcoming book is called Connecting
the Covenant: Judaism and the Search for Christian Identity in Eighteenth-Century England, to be
published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2007. He has also produced two courses on
Jewish history for the Teaching Company on both medieval and modern Jewish history.
Professor Ruderman was educated at the City College of New York, the Teacher's Institute of
the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and Columbia University. He received his rabbinical
degree from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York in 1971, and his
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Ph.D in Jewish History from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem in 1975. Prior to coming to Penn, he
held the Frederick P. Rose Chair of Jewish History at Yale University (1983-94) and the Louis L.
Kaplan Chair of Jewish Historical Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park (1974-83),
where he was instrumental in establishing both institutions' Judaic studies programs. At the University
of Maryland he also won the Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Award in l982-83.
Professor Ruderman is the author of numerous articles and reviews. He has served on the board
and as vice-president of the Association of Jewish Studies, and on the boards of the Central
Conference of American Rabbis, the Journal of Reform Judaism, the Renaissance Society of America,
and the World Union of Jewish Studies. He also chaired the task force on continuing rabbinic
education for the Central Conference of American Rabbis and HUC-JIR (1989-92) and the
Publications Committee of the Yale Judaic Series, published by Yale University Press (1984-94). He
served for five years as director of the Victor Rothschild Memorial Symposium in Jewish studies, a
seminar for doctoral and post-doctoral students held each summer by the Institute for Advanced
Studies, Hebrew University, in Jerusalem. He presently serves as a member of the academic advisory
board of the Mandel Center for Advanced Judaic Studies of the Hebrew University. He was also the
president of the American Academy for Jewish Research between 2000-2004. He is the editor of the
Center's series in Judaic studies called Jewish culture and contexts. He has taught in the Graduate
School of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York, the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, and was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at the Hebrew University. He was
born in New York in 1944 and is married with two children. In June, 2001, the National Foundation
for Jewish Culture honored him with its lifetime achievement award for his work in Jewish history.
Source: University of Pennsylvania Faculty Website http://www.history.upenn.edu/faculty/ruderman.htm
25
http://www.history.upenn.edu/faculty/ruderman.htm
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PART I
Prof. David Ruderman
Department of Modern Jewish History
Director, Center for Advanced Judaic Studies University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
I gave a formal lecture on my new book on Christian Hebraism in 18th century England and it
seemed to be well received, with several key colleagues in my field attending and asking some great
questions.
I also met with about 20 graduate students, mostly in history, who listened to me in Hebrew for
over an hour and a half on my own intellectual trajectory and my sense of writing history in the early
modern period. Professors Yossi Mali and Yosie Schwartz sat in on this session which I found to be
quite successful.
Besides my pleasant meeting with Prof. Nitzan, my hosts Elhanan Reiner and Miri Eliav-
Feldon were most helpful in arranging my schedule and making me feel at home. I also met Dean
Biderman on two occasions, including a special meeting with Raanan Rein, the vice-rector, to offer my
advice in strengthening Jewish studies at Tel Aviv. I would be happy to continue to help in this way on
my return in May and with Abraham's help, would be happy to meet the new president.
Jeremy Cohen is working on a public program, a dialogue between me and Reiner on early
modern Jewish history for my return in May. I hope to continue to meet with the graduate students as
well. I will also respond to other colleagues who have asked to see me, visit their classes, and do
anything else that might be useful.
I was most happy with the Alexander hotel, especially the new management, which cancelled
the cost of my internet service. I love the setting of the beach and found it most conducive to write and
think. I am most grateful to the Mortimer and Raymond Sackler Institute of Advanced Studies, to Prof.
Nitzan and to you for hosting me under such wonderful conditions. I look forward to my return in
May.
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PART II From: David B. Ruderman [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2007 11:51 PM To: Ronit Nevo Dear Ronit, It is a pleasure for me to report on my activities as a Sackler Fellow during my second of four visits (May 27-June 16, 2007). My primary public lecture was part of a symposium on early modern Jewry organized by Professor Jeremy Cohen. My dialogue partner in this conversation was Professor Elhanan Reiner of Tel Aviv University. This public event was well attended and attracted an interesting audience. I continued to meet with Reiner several times to discuss our mutual academic interests along with several other faculty from Tel Aviv. During this visit I met separately with Professors Eliezer Gutworth, Yaron Tsur, Nurit Gurtz, Anita Shapira, Jeremy Cohen, Aron Oppenheimer, and Miri Eliav Feldon. I also met with several graduate students in history and Jewish history who contacted me after my lecture and asked for help. I was asked by the graduate students of the Hebrew University to offer them the same seminar I had given those at Tel Aviv in January and I did. I also lectured at the University of Haifa and met with its president. I enjoyed the wonderful accommodations offered me during my stay and the collegiality of Tel Aviv University's faculty. I was able to do much reading and writing on a new book on early modern Jewish culture during these three weeks. I return for my third visit to Tel Aviv next December-January. I hope to speak to the graduate forum organized by Professor Shapira then; to meet the new president if possible; and to contribute directly to your students by offering some guest lectures in Jewish history courses at Tel Aviv. I am grateful for the honor of holding this fellowship and being a part of Tel Aviv University. I am sending a recent article of mine which has just appeared. Best wishes, David B. Ruderman Joseph Meyerhoff Professor of Modern Jewish History Ella Darivoff Director, Center for Advanced Judaic Studies University of Pennsylvania 420 Walnut St. Philadelphia, PA. 19106 Tel: (215) 238-1290
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mailto:[email protected]
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IAS 999-07 DAVID B. RUDERMAN The Impact of Early Modern Jewish Thought on the Eighteenth Century: A Challenge to the Notion of the Sephardi Mystique
During my two first stays in Tel Aviv, I began serious work on a book I have been thinking
about for many years. In the last several decades, scholars have given increasing attention to the study
of Jewish cultural formation in early modern Europe, focusing on such questions as the impact of the
Renaissance and the Baroque on Jewish civilization, on Jews and scientific discoveries, on Jewish
messianism and mysticism, on the University and the printing press as agents of Jewish cultural
change, on new Christian approaches to Jews and Judaism, and more. Many of the contributions
have focused on specific regions of Jewish cultural development such as Italy, the Ottoman Empire,
Poland-Lithuania, or the Netherlands. There is now a need to bring the new insights of this research
together and to reflect more broadly on the entire geographical and chronological scope of early
modern Jewish civilization
Only one historian, Jonathan Israel, primarily an historian of general European history,
has attempted to define what early modern might mean for Jewish history. As a Jewish historian,
I hope in a book which is slowly taking shape to expand and revise his formulations and to offer my
own tentative definition of early modern Jewish culture. Fully cognizant of the pitfalls of any rigid
scheme of periodization that attempts to link together disparate communities and cultures within a
cultural matrix rather muddled even for general European historians, I still believe such an effort is
worthwhile in seeking a deeper understanding of the meaning of this seminal epoch for both Jews
and non-Jews alike.
I have made great progress on this project during the last few months. I hope to have a first
draft of this new book completed by next summer.
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Professor DOV JARON, Sackler Lecturer in May 2007. He is the Calhoun Distinguished
Professor of Engineering in Medicine at the School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health
Systems of Drexel University in Philadelphia since 1998. His wide range of research activities
encompass: Development, physiologic evaluation, and optimization of mechanical cardiac assist
devices; Modeling of cardiovascular dynamics and assessment of cardiovascular function; and
Mechanisms of nitric oxide in the microcirculation.
Prof. Jaron studied Electrical Engineering at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology
from 1957-1958, received his B.S. in 1961 from the University of Denver, attended the University
of Colorado's Graduate School of Medical Sciences from 1961-1962; and received his Ph.D. in
Biomedical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1967.
Prof. Jaron has held numerous Directorships as follows: The Biomedical Engineering and
Science Institute at Drexel University from 1980 to 1996; The Biomedical Technology and Associate
Director of the National Center for Research Resources of the National Institute of Health from 1996-
1998; Director, Division of Biological and Critical Systems, National Science Foundation from 1991
to 1993. In addition Prof. Jaron also served as President of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and
Biology Society from 1986-1987 and President of the International Federation for Medical and
Biological Engineering from 2000-2003. Some of his honors are listed: Fellow of the Institute of
Electrical and Electronic Engineers, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering,
American Association for the Advancement of Science, International Academy for Medical and
Biological Engineering, Academy of Surgical Research. Prof. Jaron is a recipient of the NIH
Director's Award 1998; IEEE Third Millennium Medal 2000; and the Merit Award, International
Union for Physical and Engineering Sciences in Medicine 2006. He has published over 150 scientific
journal articles in addition to abstracts, conference presentations and chapters in books.
From email, June 20, 2007:
I also wanted to let you know that I enjoyed very much interacting with the faculty of the college and
the department and in particular, with the many bright students attending the program. It was a very
productive time for me and I hope that my visit would result in future collaborations with the faculty.
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Professor Dov Jaron
Report by Prof. Ofer Barnea
Department of Biomedical Engineering Fleischman Faculty of Engineering
Prof Dov Jaron from the School of Biomedical Engineering at Drexel University, spent two
weeks with us at the department of Biomedical Engineering at Tel Aviv University. During these two
weeks he gave two talks. One talk was a research summary on the role of NO in oxygen supply to the
myocardium. This talk created much interest and led to research collaboration. The second talk was
dedicated to the future of Biomedical Engineering. It was an extremely important talk that addressed
both students and faculty with a couple of hundred attendants. During this visit subjects regarding
undergraduate and graduate curricula in Biomedical Engineering were discussed resulting in the co-
authoring of Ofer Barnea and Dov Jaron of a new textbook in Biomedical Engineering.
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Professor DAVID HARBATER, Sackler Lecturer from May 19 30, 2007. Prof. Harbater
is the Christopher H. Browne Professor in the Department of Mathematics from the University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Prof. Harbater received his A.B., summa cum laude from Harvard
University, Cambridge in 1974; his M.S. from Brandeis University, Waltham in 1975; his Ph.D.
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge in 1978; and an honorary M.A. from
the University of Pennsylvania in 1984. He is the recipient of two outstanding prizes: the Frank
Nelson Cole Prize in Algebra in1995 and the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1995.
Prof. Harbater's general research interests are Galois theory with connections to arithmetic
algebraic geometry.
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Professor David Harbater
Report by Prof. Moshe Jarden
The Cissie & Aaron Beare Chair in Algebra and Number Theory School of Mathematics, Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences
David Harbater published a pioneering work on the inverse problem of Galois theory in
1987 where he proved that every finite group occurs as a Galois group over Qp(x) as well as over
K0((t))(x) for an arbitrary field K0. The method he used in the proof is now known as formal
patching. He used it once more in 1994 to reduce the generalized Abhyankars conjecture to the
special case which Michel Raynaud settled. For that achievement, Harbater won (together with
Raynaud) the prestigious Cole Prize in mathematics.
Professor Dan Haran and I developed an alternative simplified method to realize finite groups
and solve finite split embedding problems, called algebraic patching. The mutual interest that has
been raised between Harbater and his co-workers on the one hand and our group on the other hand
resulted in mutual reviewing of works, meeting and discussions in workshops over the years, and two
visits of the undersigned at the University of Pennsylvania. It was only natural to invite Harbater to
Tel Aviv University and we are obliged to the Sackler Institute for Advanced Studies that gave us the
means to finance the visit.
The visit turned out to be a big success. Harbater gave two talks. The first one was for a general
audience in the framework of the weekly colloquium of the School of Mathematics on Patching and
Galois Theory and was well received by the faculty. The second one was more directed to specialists
and was given in our weekly seminar on Field Arithmetic. In addition to our small group of graduate
students several more graduate people showed up and attended the talk on Local Galois Theory in
Dimension 2.
More important than the talks were the discussions we had with Harbater. Professor Haran and
his Ph.D students, Lior Bary-Soroker and Elad Paran kept Harbater busy with mathematics literally
every minute of his stay in the School of Mathematics. These discussions have resulted in a joint work
of Harbater, Haran, and Bary-Soroker.
The undersigned did not want to interrupt those discussions. Nevertheless, he found an
opportunity to get an important information from Harbater for the book he is currently writing.
On the recreational side, Bary-Soroker and myself took Harbater to Masada. He enjoyed the
visit very much. For all that we thank the Sackler Institute for Advanced Studies.
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454 NOTICES OF THE AMS VOLUME 42, NUMBER 4
1995 Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Algebra The Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Algebra is awarded every five years for a notable research memoir
in algebra which has appeared in the previous five years. This prize and the Frank Nelson Cole Prize
in Number Theory were established in honor of Professor Frank Nelson Cole, who served as secretary
of the AMS from 1896 to 1920 and also served as editor-in-chief of the Bulletin for twenty-one years.
The original fund was donated by Professor Cole out of monies presented to him on his retirement.
The fund has been augmented by contributions from members of the Society, including a gift made
in 1929 by Charles A. Cole, Professor Coles son, which more than doubled the size of the fund. In
recent years, the Cole Prizes have been augmented by awards from the Leroy P. Steele Fund;
currently they amount to $4,000.
The Twenty-fifth Cole Prize is shared by David Harbater of the University of Pennsylvania
and Michel Raynaud of Universit de Paris-Sud, Orsay. The prize was presented at the Societys
101st Annual Meeting in San Francisco in January 1995. The prize is awarded by the AMS Council,
acting through a selection committee consisting of Barry Mazur, Shigefumi Mori, and Jean-Pierre
Serre (chair).
The text below includes the citations from the selection committee, the recipients responses
upon receiving the prize, and a brief biographical sketch of each recipient.
Citation
The Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Algebra for 1995 is awarded to Michel Raynaud and David Harbater
for their solution of Abhyankars conjecture. This work appeared in the papers Revtements de la
droite affine en caractristique p > 0, Invent. Math. 116 (1994), 425462 (Raynaud), and
Abhyankars conjecture on Galois groups over curves, Invent. Math. 117 (1994), 125 (Harbater).
As a first application of his reworking of algebraic geometry, A. Grothendieck constructed a
theory of the fundamental group of an algebraic curve over a field of arbitrary characteristic. He
could prove that when the curve had a usual fundamental group, the algebraic one was the profinite
completion of the topological one (case of characteristic 0). In characteristic p > 0, the same
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statement is true if one lifts the curve to characteristic 0 and restricts attention to the prime-to-p part of
the group. However, the theory is powerless for the p part of the fundamental group in characteristic
p. Already in 1957, S. Abhyankar had seen that the situation was bound to be more complicated for
the p part than for the usual (prime-to-p) part (Amer. J. Math. 79, 825856). For example, the affine
line in characteristic p is not simply connected, because the Artin-Schreier coverings preclude this.
Abhyankar made the following conjecture in his cited paper: For a finite group G, write p(G) for the
subgroup generated by all the p-Sylow subgroups of G. If X is a projective curve in characteristic p >
0, and if x0; : : : ; xt, are points of X(t > 0), then a necessary and sufficient condition that G occur as
the Galois group of a finite covering, Y, of Xbranched only at the points x0; : : : ; xt is that G =
p(G) have 2g + t generators. (Of course, g is the genus of X, and the generator condition is merely the
statement that
G = p(G) appear as a quotient of the usual fundamental group of the open curve Xfx0; : : : ; xtg.)
Michel Raynaud is among the best active specialists in algebraic geometry and its applications
to number theory. A thread common to most of his work is its great generality that still provides the
means to attack concrete problems very effectively. Thus, several of his results, notably those
concerning finite group schemes of type (p;p; : : : ; p), rigid analytic geometry, Neron models, and
Picard functors, have become the tools of choice in algebraic geometry and arithmetic.
David Harbater has made pioneering contributions to formal algebraic geometry. A thread
common to most of his work is the use of power series methods. He has made significant advances in
such areas as approximation theory and formal geometric methods, which include his theory of mock
coverings and patching methods. In the prize winning works, Raynaud solved the Abhyankar problem
in the crucial case of the affine line (the projective line with a point deleted) by using rigid analytic
methods ( la Tate), combined with a very interesting study of the action of the Galois group on the
graph of components, in the case of bad reduction. Harbater then proves the full Abhyankar conjecture
by building upon the solution of the conjecture for the case of the affine line and by using the powerful
methods mentioned above that he has developed.
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David Harbater's Response
I am very happy to accept this award and would like to thank the AMS and the selection committee.
I also would like to express my thanks to my thesis advisor, Michael Artin, for having initially
suggested to me the problem of studying fundamental groups in characteristic p. In addition, I would
like to take this occasion to express my appreciation for the continuing support over the years that have
received at the Penn Mathematics Department from Steve Shatz and that I have received at home from
Judy Axler.
The papers that have been cited prove a conjecture that was posed in 1957 by S. S. Abhyankar
as an outgrowth of his work on resolution of singularities. In that work he considered varieties over
fields of characteristic p as well as arithmetic varieties. By taking linear slices of surfaces that he
wished to resolve, he found interesting examples of covers of curves in characteristic p and especially
unramified covers of the affine line. Based on these examples, he conjectured which finite groups can
arise as the Galois groups (i.e., deck transformation groups) of covers of a curve of genus g with r
points removed over an algebraically closed field k of characteristic p. A few years later,
Grothendieck showed that the conjecture was correct in the case of groups of order prime to p.
Grothendiecks method did not generalize to arbitrary groups, however, because it involved
comparison between coverings of curves over k and of curves over C (i.e., Riemann surfaces).
Little further progress was made until the 1980s, when Nori and Abhyankar each found
examples of infinite classes of finite groups that, as conjectured, do occur over the affine line over k.
In 1990, Serre proved the conjecture for solvable groups over the affine line, using a cohomological
approach. The following year, I was able to obtain partial results toward Abhyankars conjecture over
general affine curves, using formal patching. Upon sending a copy of this manuscript to Serre, I
learned from him that Raynaud had just obtained related results over the affine line using rigid
patching and that Raynaud was hopeful that he could prove the full conjecture over the affine line by
combining these results with an argument using semistable reduction. In 1992, Raynaud succeeded in
doing just that. The year after, I was able to combine Raynauds result with my formal patching
methods in order to prove the conjecture over arbitrary affine curves. The key step involved going
from the affine line to the once-punctured affine line, using a formal patching construction with a
ramified closed fibre. From there, another formal patching construction yielded the general case
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Both patching methodsformal and rigidallow for the possibility of treating curves in
characteristic p much as though they were Riemann surfaces. In particular, these approaches permit
cut-andpaste constructions, which would not make sense if one worked only within the Zariski
topology. In my case, the formal approach was one that I had previously used in the 1980s to realize
all finite groups as Galois groups of branched covers of the line over p-adic and algebraically closed
fields. Raynaud had previously shown that the formal and rigid approaches are in many situations
essentially equivalent, in the sense of almost having a dictionary between them. Intuitively, however,
they are quite different, and the intuition behind the rigid approach is probably more accessible. On the
other hand, the formal approach enables one to draw on the edifice constructed by Grothendieck in
EGA. I am convinced that patching methods, in whichever guise, will permit much further progress to
be made toward many of the open problems concerning Galois groups and fundamental groups in
characteristic p and in arithmetic situations. And I am very pleased to be sharing this award with
Michel Raynaud.
Source: NOTICES OF THE AMS, April 1995, 42, No. 4, p. 454-456. Website: http://www.ams.org/notices/199504/prize-cole.pdf
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http://www.ams.org/notices/199504/prize-cole.pdf
The Annual Report 2006 - 2007 of theMortimer and Raymond Sackler Institute of Advanced StudiesTable of ContentsSamuel L. and Perry Haber Chair on the Study of the Jewish Experience in the United States Director, Goldreich Family Institute for Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture
StutterMarc ShellSource: Harvard University Press, Website: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/SHESTU.html
17 Polio and Its AftermathThe Paralysis of Culture Marc Shell
Source: Harvard University Press, Website: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/SHEPOL.html18Marc Shell. Polio and Its Aftermath: The Paralysis of Culture.Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2005. 336 pp., illus.Website: http://jhmas.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/61/2/232