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P.O. Box 5000
Upton, NY 11973-5000
phone 631 344-2345
fax 631 344-3368
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managed for the U.S. Department of Energy
by Brookhaven Science Associates, a company
founded by Stony Brook University and Battelle

News Release

Number: 04-67
Released: June 11,  2004
Contact: Diane Greenberg, 631 344-2347 or Mona S. Rowe, 631 344-5056

Public Radio Host John Lienhard to Give Talk at Brookhaven Lab, 7/12

Upton, NY — John Lienhard, public radio host, will give a talk titled "Eye of the Forehead and Eye of the Mind: How Engineers and Scientists See," at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory on Monday, July 12, at noon in the Laboratory's Berkner Hall. The free lecture is open to the public. All visitors to the Laboratory age 16 and over must bring a photo ID.

John Lienhard

Lienhard contends that spatial visualization is the subtlest of abilities. In his talk, he will trace its evolution and texture through the past five centuries and will explain an unanticipated phenomenon that he discovered: As remarkable aids to seeing — all the way from mechanical perspective to magnetic resonance imaging — have been developed, they may have been placing mental visualization under threat.

John Lienhard received a B.S. degree in 1951 and went on to receive M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Washington and the University of California, Berkeley, respectively. He has held faculty positions at several universities, where he has worked in the area of thermal and fluid systems. Since 1980, he has been on the faculty of the University of Houston, and, since 1989, he has been the M.D. Anderson Professor of both mechanical engineering and history there.

Lienhard is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and an honorary member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Since 1988, he has written and hosted nearly 2,000 episodes of "The Engines of Our Ingenuity," a program heard nationally on public radio in the U.S. and occasionally in Great Britain. Using the medium of history, the program celebrates creativity and invention and shows how they shape culture and technology.

For more information about the lecture, call (631) 344-2345. The Laboratory is located on William Floyd Parkway (County Road 46), one-and-a-half miles north of Exit 68 of the Long Island Expressway.

One of the ten national laboratories overseen and primarily funded by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Brookhaven National Laboratory conducts research in the physical, biomedical, and environmental sciences, as well as in energy technologies and national security. Brookhaven Lab also builds and operates major scientific facilities available to university, industry and government researchers. Brookhaven is operated and managed for DOE’s Office of Science by Brookhaven Science Associates, a limited-liability company founded by Stony Brook University, the largest academic user of Laboratory facilities, and Battelle, a nonprofit, applied science and technology organization.