Lyceum Society February 2021 Meeting

Welcome and Introductions:       11:30 am to 11:40 am

Preliminary Presentation:            11:40 am to 12:30 pm

Speaker: Stuart Kurtz

Topic: Haber, Bosch, and the Alchemy of Air: Part 1 - Science

Bio:

Stuart Kurtz graduated from MIT with an SB in Chemical Engineering and from Princeton with an MS degree in Polymer Engineering and an MA and PhD. in Chemical Engineering. He taught at RPI and in Brazil as Professor Titular in Materials Engineering. This was followed by a research career in industry accumulating around 30 patents and publishing at least a few good papers.  He now focuses on Philosophy of Science and Physics and climbing mountains because they are there. He has spoken to the Lyceum Society many times; most recently in January, 2018 when he spoke on the topic: Lessons from Science Lysenko, Velikovsky and the Demarcation Problem; In February, 2018 he spoke on Geoengineering for Climate Change Mitigation. In April, 2019 he spoke on Does Time Flow?  In December, 2019 he reviewed the Nobel Prize in Physics for that year.

Main Presentation: 12:30 to 2:00 pm

Speaker: David Haas

Topic: The Structure of the COVID Virus

Bio:

David Haas received his BA in Physics and PhD in Biophysics in protein crystallography and molecular biology at the State University of NY at Buffalo.  For the next five years, he performed basic research in protein crystallography at several institutions in Europe, Israel and the United States.  In 1970, he joined Philips Electronic Instruments in Mt Vernon NY as Principal Scientist for X-ray systems, working on analytical instruments and designing some of the first airport security X-ray systems that were used worldwide during the 1970s. Conceiving the idea of a self-expiring security ID (Visitor badge), David and his wife, Sandra, formed Temtec Inc. which developed and manufactured high-tech visitor and temporary IDs for more than 20 years under the brand name TEMPbadge. Temtec Inc. was sold to Brady Worldwide Corporation in 2002. David & Sandra Haas have more than 80 patents to their credit as well as many technical and scientific publications.