News

In his new book, The Price of Civilization (Random House, 2011), Jeffrey Sachs argues that the United States has underestimated the long-term effects of globalization, which have created deep and largely unmet challenges with regard to jobs, incomes, poverty and the environment.

Stéphane Hessel, a 93-year-old French Resistance leader who survived imprisonment in concentration camps to become an ambassador and human rights activist, came to Columbia on Sept. 27 to deliver a message to today’s youth: Identify something happening in the world that truly frustrates you, and commit to changing it.

After less than a month in operation, a new NASA satellite has produced the first map showing how saltiness varies across the surface of the world’s oceans.

Columbia University will award the 2011 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael W. Young for their work on the molecular basis of circadian rhythms, the first demonstration of a molecular mechanism for behavior. 

An investigative reporter whose work has revealed how secret profit schemes cheated the families of fallen U.S. soldiers, sickened or killed patients and cost taxpayers billions of dollars is the recipient of the 2011John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism announced today. David Evans, senior writer for Bloomberg Markets magazine, was selected in recognition of his tenacious reporting over two decades on stories that expose wrongdoing and bring about reform.

2011 Chancellor Award Winner David Evans

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As the Columbia Lions geared up for the 2011 season, Football Head Coach Norries Wilson sat down to discuss expectations and team philosophy ahead of the team’s home opener against Albany on Friday, Sept. 24 at the Robert K. Kraft Field at Columbia’s Baker Athletic Complex.  

Columbia University’sMiriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallerycelebrates the beginning of the academic year withSquare Word Calligraphy Classroom, an exhibition by renowned Chinese contemporary artist Xu Bing.

Special from The Record

Throughout history, milk has been a symbol of motherhood and fertility, but also prosperity, health and strength. In Hindu mythology a churning ocean of milk releases the nectar of immortality. Statues of the Egyptian goddess Isis show her nursing her son, Horus. Romans credited the creation of the Milky Way to the spraying breast milk of the goddess Juno.

Special from The Record

After four years at Columbia, Samuel Alexander will have a bachelor’s degree in English and Comparative Literature. And another one in Midrash, or rabbinic storytelling, from Jewish Theological Seminary.

The idea that humanity could turn tables on economic necessity—mastering rather than being enslaved by material circumstances—is so new that Jane Austen never entertained it.

What do you do for a follow-up when your first book is a bestseller that wins the National Book Circle Award, is a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and gets turned into a movie that wins four Academy Awards?

Special from The Record

Not many undergraduates who hop a ship to Alaska can expect to become part of a research team examining the earthquake risks of the Pacific Ring of Fire. But over the summer, a group of Columbia research scientists and undergraduates did just that, spending time aboard a National Science Foundation ship operated by Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and mapping the ocean floor off the Aleutian Islands.

In a soundproof room in Pupin Hall, a futuristic-looking metallic apparatus is creating three-dimensional images of a material that may one day power a new generation of smaller and faster electronic devices. The miracle substance is graphene, a single-atom-thick sheet of carbon that has captivated scientists since it was first isolated in 2004.The imaging device is operated by physicist Abhay Pasupathy, who is studying the properties of graphene. He and his team want to understand how the ultra-thin, super-strong material behaves so scientists can continue to develop practical applications…

When T.D. Lee was hired by Columbia as an assistant professor in 1953, he joined what was arguably one of the greatest physics departments ever assembled. And in short order, the 26-year-old theoretical physicist became a legend himself.