News
Title
Director of Academic Administration in the Writing Program and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Writing
Years at Columbia
8
How many law courses discuss the creation of the heavens, the mark of Cain, and the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden?
Geoffrey Heal studied physics and economics as an undergraduate, but has always cared deeply about the environment. “I’ve been interested in nature all my life,” he says. “As a kid I was buying binoculars and going bird watching and buying a little camera and taking pictures of birds and things like that.”
Linda P. Fried, dean and DeLamar Professor at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, was honored for her leadership in scientific research on aging with the 2016 Inserm International Prize, given each year by the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research. For video and to read more about Fried’s work, visit the Mailman School of Public Health site.
Dear Antiquarian,
Among the 600,000 volumes in Avery Library is Leon Batista Alberti’s De re aedificatoria, the oldest printed book on architecture in the West. Printed in 1485, it is an overview of architectural principles, exploring concepts such as proportion, durability and beauty. Though not illustrated, architectural treatises that followed it shortly thereafter would feature numerous illustrations.
In the latest installment of Professor Mike Massimino’s Extreme Engineering series, he visits Eitan Grinspun, director of Columbia’s Computer Graphics Group, who develops computer programs to animate Hollywood movies, including the new Disney feature Moana.
Zainab Bahrani, the Edith Porada Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Art and Archaeology in the Department of Art History and Archaeology, is leading a project that focuses on heritage destruction in the Middle East.
New data released by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research - Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNITAR-UNOSAT) shows a stark pattern of destruction when overlaid on the zones of territory control in Aleppo: damaged sites identified by UNOSAT lie primarily within or just outside the outlines of the besieged areas in eastern Aleppo, confirming that this portion of the city has been systematically bombed and shelled for the duration of the war. View full interactive map
When Henry Moore’s bronze Reclining Figure was installed in front of Havemeyer Hall on December 14, Columbia became the second university in the United States, after MIT, to have two Moore sculptures on permanent display. The British sculptor (1898-1986) was one of the more prominent artists of the 20th century, celebrated for work that blended elements of Surrealism, abstraction and non-Western art to change the profile of public sculpture. His work is on display in parks and plazas worldwide, and in the collections of such museums as New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. and the Tate in London.
Columbia Mathematics Professor Mohammed Abouzaid has been named a 2017 recipient of the prestigious New Horizons in Mathematics Prize. The $100,000 award recognizes the achievements and raises the profiles of early-career physicists and mathematicians.
Scientists have found evidence in a chunk of bedrock drilled from nearly two miles below the summit of the Greenland ice sheet that the sheet nearly disappeared for an extended time in the last million years or so. The finding casts doubt on assumptions that Greenland has been relatively stable during the recent geological past, and implies that global warming could tip it into decline more precipitously than previously thought. Such a decline could cause rapid sea-level rise. The findings appear this week in the leading journal Nature.
The study is based on perhaps earth’s rarest geologic sample: the only bit of bedrock yet retrieved from the ice sheet’s base, more than two decades ago. The authors say that chemical isotopes in it indicate that the surface was exposed to open sky for at least 280,000 years over the last 1.4 million years. The reason would have been natural, probably tied to cyclic natural climate changes that have caused ice ages to wax and wane. The scientists say that in the most conservative interpretation, there might have been only one ice-free period that ended 1.1 million years ago. But, more likely, they say, the ice vanished multiple times for shorter periods closer to the present. Greenland contains about 684,000 cubic miles of ice—enough to raise global sea levels about 24 feet if it were to melt completely.
Learn more about Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory's research.
From 19th-century studio practice through the independence era of the 1950s and 1960s, African photography has best been known for modes of portraiture that crystallize subjects’ identities and social milieus. Even contemporary art photographs are often interpreted as windows into African lives, whether actual or theatricalized.
This exhibition reconsiders African contemporary photographic portraiture by presenting the work of four artists whose concerns range beyond depicting social identity: Sammy Baloji, Mohamed Camara, Saïdou Dicko, and George Osodi. Works by these four artists lend greater thematic and formal versatility to the practice of portraiture.
Learn More about this exhibition featured at the Wallach Art Gallery.