North Korea, which just conducted its third nuclear test, is using its weapons program to deter the United States by holding its allies “hostage,” according to Paul Bracken, who teaches management and political science at Yale.
Bracken is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, serves on several Department of Defense advisory boards, and is the author, most recently, of “The Second Nuclear Age: Strategy, Danger, and the New Power Politics” (Times Books, 2012). The following is an edited version of an email interview with him. (more…)
Award-winning journalist, activist, and author Charlayne Hunter-Gault told a packed audience at Yale that lessons learned from the civil rights movement still have relevance for current and future generations.
Hunter-Gault delivered a lecture titled “Social Justice, Equity, and Public Health” during a Branford College master’s tea on Feb. 5. (more…)
In awarding Yale’s George Daniel Mostow its 2013 Wolf Foundation Prize in mathematics — one of the field’s premier global awards — the foundation offered this crisp assessment: “Few mathematicians,” it said, “can compete with the breadth, depth, and originality of his works.”
Here Mostow, an emeritus professor since 1998, talks about the English teacher who led him to a life in math, the pleasure of family, high-definition opera, and the Nth dimension — as well as the “eureka!” moment at a New Haven stoplight that secured him a place in the history of geometry.
When did it dawn on you that you wanted to be a professional mathematician?
In high school, mathematics was my favorite subject. I especially enjoyed challenging problems. But I did not know that mathematics was a profession. I am indebted to my high school English teacher who, in my senior year, called me up to his desk to ask about my career plans, and told me that his brother was a mathematician. I decided then and there that mathematics was for me.(more…)
Charles Wright, hailed as one of the leading American poets of his generation, has been named the winner of Yale’s 2013 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry.
The Bollingen Prize in American Poetry is among the most prestigious prizes given to American writers. Established by Paul Mellon in 1949, it is awarded biennially by the Yale University Library to an American poet for the best book published during the previous two years or for lifetime achievement in poetry. The prize includes a cash award of $150,000. (more…)
The asteroid collision widely thought to have killed the dinosaurs also led to extreme devastation among snake and lizard species, according to new research — including the extinction of a newly identified lizard Yale and Harvard scientists have named Obamadon gracilis.
“The asteroid event is typically thought of as affecting the dinosaurs primarily,” said Nicholas R. Longrich, a postdoctoral associate with Yale’s Department of Geology and Geophysics and lead author of the study. “But it basically cut this broad swath across the entire ecosystem, taking out everything. Snakes and lizards were hit extremely hard.” (more…)
Dean Starkman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning financial journalist for the Columbia Journalism Review, shared his theories about the 2008 financial crisis with students at a Calhoun College master’s tea on Nov. 29. His talk was sponsored by the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism at Yale.
Starkman, who is currently writing a book on what he regards as the failure of the media to anticipate the financial crisis, explained that he believes the evidence was there, yet no major news sources reported it. “I don’t like the financial press and institutionalized media because they screwed up the pre-crisis coverage, and I don’t like the new media people either — so what do I like?” Starkman joked. (more…)
In the wake of the announcement that Provost Peter Salovey has been named as Yale’s 23rd president (see YaleNews story), here is a look at how he fits in with his presidential predecessors.
• He will be the third psychologist to hold Yale’s top administrative post.
Noah Porter, president 1871-1886, was an early figure in the development of American psychology. His book “The Human Intellect,” which features an “Introduction upon Psychology and the Human Soul” (1868), explored the tensions between religious belief and “scientific” psychology. (more…)
A Yale-led scientific team has produced the most comprehensive family tree for birds to date, connecting all living bird species — nearly 10,000 in total — and revealing surprising new details about their evolutionary history and its geographic context.
Analysis of the family tree shows when and where birds diversified — and that birds’ diversification rate has increased over the last 50 million years, challenging the conventional wisdom of biodiversity experts.
“It’s the first time that we have — for such a large group of species and with such a high degree of confidence — the full global picture of diversification in time and space,” said biologist Walter Jetz of Yale, lead author of the team’s research paper, published Oct. 31 online in the journal Nature. (more…)
