[Sci-tech-public] MIT's John Durant at Science on Screen

Tue Oct 6 21:29:36 EDT 2009

On Oct. 19, our colleagues John Durant and Anne Harrington will be the guest
speakers at the Coolidge Corner Theatre’s presentation of Science on Screen,
featuring the film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

 Details appear below. 

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The Coolidge Corner Theatre’s Science on Screen series returns on Monday,
October 19 at 7:00 p.m. with a presentation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
Victor Fleming’s 1941 adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic
Victorian gothic tale. The film will be introduced by MIT professor John
Durant and Harvard professor Anne Harrington. The pair, both specialists in
the history of science, co-taught a course on science and medicine in
Victorian England at London’s Imperial College last summer.

Screen legend Spencer Tracy stars in the dual title role in Fleming’s
Oscar-nominated film. In 1887 London, Dr. Henry Jekyll is a socially
upstanding physician whose unorthodox theories alarm his older colleagues.
Jekyll believes that each man has two selves, one good and one evil, that
can be separated through science, freeing the good so that it can triumph
and allowing the bad to “destroy itself in its own degradation.” Toiling in
his lab, he develops a drug which transforms him into the cruel and
remorseless Edward Hyde. Initially, Jekyll is able to dispense of Hyde
whenever he chooses. But as he repeatedly takes the potion, Hyde begins to
dominate, until he can no longer be controlled. Lana Turner co-stars as
Jekyll’s loving, forgiving fiancée and Ingrid Berman as a luckless barmaid
pursued and abused by the malevolent Hyde.  

Before the film, John Durant and Anne Harrington provide a fascinating
window into some of the scientific theories and debates of the era in which
Stevenson’s famously divided character was born. In the late 19th century,
man’s animal origins, as revealed by Darwin, and the idea of degeneration
(that humanity could fall downwards on the evolutionary ladder as easily as
it could move upwards) had a strong hold on the Victorian imagination. It
was a time when physicians circulated a theory of a double brain, when dual
personality and other cases of mental illness were often attributed to brain
hemisphere imbalance, and when people anxiously wondered where the soul
lived in relation to the brain.    

About Our Speakers

John Durant is director of the MIT Museum, adjunct professor in MIT’s
Science, Technology and Society Program, and executive director of the
Cambridge Science Festival. 

He was formerly assistant director and head of science communication at the
Science Museum, London and professor of public understanding of science at
London’s Imperial College. Dr. Durant has a PhD in History and Philosophy of
Science from the University of Cambridge. His areas of research have
included the history of evolutionary and behavioral biology, particularly
debates about animal nature and human nature in the late-19th and 20th
centuries.

Anne Harrington is chair of the Department of the History of Science at
Harvard University and a professor in that department, specializing in the
history of psychiatry, neuroscience, and the other mind sciences. She is
also visiting professor for medical history at the London School of
Economics, where she co-edits the journal Biosocieties. Dr. Harrington is
the author of three books, Medicine, Mind and the Double Brain (1987),
Reenchanted Science (1997), and The Cure Within (2008), and has also
produced a range of articles and edited collections.  

About Science on Screen

With Science on Screen, the Coolidge presents a feature film or documentary
with a basis in science, medicine, or technology, paired with exciting
introductions by noted guest speakers in a related field.  Thanks to our
fiscal sponsors Brit d’Arbeloff, Gesmer Updegrove, LLP and Richard Anders.
Science on Screen is co-presented by the Museum of Science, Boston and New
Scientist magazine.

Science on Screen programs are $9.75 regular admission; $7.75 for students
and Museum of Science members; and free for Coolidge Corner Theatre members.
Tickets are available on-line at  <http://www.coolidge.org/>
www.coolidge.org or at the Coolidge Corner Theatre box office, located at
290 Harvard Street in Brookline.

============================

Upcoming Science on Screen programs:

Nov. 16: BABETTE’S FEAST with professor Guy Crosby, science editor, Cook’s
Illustrated and America’s Test Kitchen

Dec. 7: AMERICAN BEAUTY with Daniel Gilbert, Harvard social psychologist and
author, Stumbling on Happiness

Jan. 18: WILD CHILD (speaker TBD)

============================

Previous Science on Screen programs include:

COMA with Robin Cook, MD

AN EVENING WITH RAY KURZWEIL

GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER with social psychologist Mahzarin Banaji

GROUNDHOG DAY with physicist and science historian Peter Galison

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD with psychiatrist Steven Schlozman, MD

THEREMIN: AN ELECTRONIC ODYSSEY with music technology pioneer Tod Machover

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK with archaeologist Curtis Runnels

SLEEPER with Brock Reeve, executive director, Harvard Stem Cell Institute

STAR TREK: THE WRATH OF KAHN with former NASA astronaut Jeffery Hoffman

SUPERMAN with physicist Max Tegmark

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE with evolutionary biologist Marc Hauser

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND with psychologist Daniel Schacter

DONNIE DARKO with Bruce M. Cohen, president emeritus, McLean Hospital

RICHARD FEYNMAN: NO ORDINARY GENIUS with physicist, mathematician and
business leader Stephen Wolfram 

SO MUCH, SO FAST with Jamie Heywood, founder, ALS Therapy Institute

FORBIDDEN PLANET with artificial intelligence pioneer Rodney Brooks

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY with cognitive scientist Marvin Minsky

THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN with epidemiologist Alfred DeMaria

A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME with cosmologist Alan Guth

JAWS with marine biologist Greg Skomal 

DIAL M FOR MURDER with experimental psychologist Steven Pinker

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