Nobelist Wilson To Speak on Math, Science Teaching

Nobelist Kenneth Wilson will involve the audience in discussing the teaching of math and science and his book Redesigning Education at the Graduate School of Education on Tuesday, March 5, at 6 p.m. Wilson's talk will take place in the Gutman Conference Center on Appian Way.

Wilson is currently working on systemic educational reform as co-principal investigator of Ohio's Project Discovery, one of the National Science Foundation's Statewide Systemic Initiatives. Project Discovery aims to increase the quality of teaching and learning of mathematics and science through sustained, researched-based professional development institutes at 10 sites in Ohio.

In Redesigning Education (Henry Holt, 1994) Wilson and his co-author Bennett Daviss assert that the current educational system is outdated, that combining teaching and research does not work, and that teacher training needs to be revamped. They draw ideas from industry and science to redesign the infrastructure of education.

A physical scientist, Wilson received the 1982 Nobel Prize in Physics for discoveries he made in understanding how bulk matter undergoes "phase transition." Since 1988 he has been the Hazel C. Youngberg Trustees Distinguished Professor at Ohio State University. A 1956 magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, he earned a doctorate from the California Institute of Technology in 1961. He has been a Junior Fellow in Harvard's Society of Fellows and was director of the Center for Theory and Simulation in Science and Engineering at Cornell.

Sponsored by the Harvard Education Forum, Wilson's talk is free and open to the public.