News Release| Leon Pape Memorial Lecture; Cal State L.A.

May 17, 2011

California State Librarian Emeritus to discuss ‘How Science Changed California and The West’

Annual Leon Pape Memorial Lecture at Cal State L.A. May 20

Los Angeles, CA – As part of Cal State L.A.’s Annual Leon Pape Memorial Lecture, California State Librarian Emeritus Kevin Owen Starr will present “How Science Changed California and The West” on Friday, May 20, at 2 p.m. in Physical Sciences 158, on the Cal State L.A. campus.

In this lecture, Starr will discuss how science developed California and how California developed science, focusing on the interaction between nature and technology in the creation of California as a mega-state. 

A distinguished historian, Starr has served as Allston Burr Senior Tutor in Eliot House at Harvard and the city librarian of San Francisco, and is currently university professor and professor of history at the University of Southern California.

His many articles and books, including his Americans and the California Dream series, have won him a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Gold and Silver Medals of the Commonwealth Club, Presidential Medallion from USC, and the Centennial Medal from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard. Oxford University Press has recently published Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963, and Bloomsbury USA has recently released Golden Gate: The Life and Times of America’s Greatest Bridge.

In 2006, Starr was awarded the Humanities Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities by former President George W. Bush. He received his B.A. in English at the University of San Francisco, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English and American Literature at Harvard University.

The lecture series honors the late Leon Pape, a member of the Cal State L.A. Physics Department faculty from 1961 to 1971, by bringing Nobel Prize winners and other science experts to the campus. Past speakers have included Nobel Laureates David Gross, Rosalyn S. Yalow, William A. Fowler, Linus Pauling, Hans A. Bethe, Leon M. Lederman, Francis H.C. Crick, David Baltimore and F. Sherwood Rowland.

For more information, call the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Cal State L.A., (323) 343-2100 or go to /dept/physics/papelecture.htm.  

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Who & What:  California State Librarian Emeritus Kevin Owen Starr will present “"How Science Changed California and The West” at Cal State L.A.’s Annual Leon Pape Memorial Lecture.

When: Friday, May 20, 2011 – 2 p.m.

Where: Physical Sciences, room 158, on the Cal State L.A. campus. (For campus map and directions, go to: www.calstatela.edu) Permit parking is available at Lots 5 and 7 or Parking Structure C.

Details: Free to the public. Contact the CSULA Physics and Astronomy Department at (323) 343-2100.

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Working for California since 1947: The 175-acre hilltop campus of California State University, Los Angeles is at the heart of a major metropolitan city, just five miles from Los Angeles’ civic and cultural center. More than 20,000 students and 215,000 alumni—with a wide variety of interests, ages and backgrounds—reflect the city’s dynamic mix of populations. Six Colleges offer nationally recognized science, arts, business, criminal justice, engineering, nursing, education and humanities programs, among others, led by an award-winning faculty. Cal State L.A. is home to the critically-acclaimed Luckman Jazz Orchestra and to the Honors College for high-achieving students, opening in fall 2011. Programs that provide exciting enrichment opportunities to students and community include an NEH-supported humanities center; a NASA-funded center for space research; and a growing forensic science program, housed in the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center. www.calstatela.edu