Symposium to celebrate work of CU chemical ecologist Thomas Eisner

By Roger Segelken

Former students who learned from Thomas Eisner, the J.G. Schurman Professor of Chemical Ecology at Cornell, and scientific colleagues who learned alongside him will celebrate the distinguished biologist's 40-year career on Nov. 17 with a symposium titled "Learning from Nature."

The symposium, chaired by John H. Law, University of Arizona professor of biochemistry and entomology, is free and open to the public from 1 to 5 p.m. in the Cornell Center for Theatre Arts. The following speakers will be featured:

This scanning electronmicrograph of the beetle Hemisphaerota cyanea, under assault by an ant, is among several on display at the Johnson Museum of Art during the Nov. 17 symposium. The photo illustrates a technique, developed by Eisner, for freezing insects in place during electron-microscope work. Thomas Eisner

• Edward O. Wilson, University Research Professor, Harvard University, on "Learning from Nature: From Biology to the Unity of Knowledge." A longtime Eisner colleague and a friend since graduate-school days at Harvard, Wilson is the author most recently of Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge and Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition.

• Fotis C. Kafatos, director-general of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany, on "Life at the Molecular Level: The Malaria Parasite and the Mosquito Vector." Kafatos earned a degree in zoology, studied field biology with Eisner and published his first scientific papers during three years at Cornell before earning the Ph.D. in biology (in three and a half years) at Harvard. His current research concerns the genetic, molecular and cellular mechanisms that permit the malaria parasite to develop within the mosquito vector.

• John G. Hildebrand, professor of neurobiology, biochemistry and molecular biophysics, entomology, and molecular and cellular biology at the University of Arizona and director of the Arizona Research Laboratories Division of Neurobiology, on "Learning from Nature: The Brains Behind a Behavioral Response to a Chemical Signal." Also a longtime friend, Hildebrand conducts research on the organization, physiology, functioning and postembryonic development of the insect nervous system. He is a past president of the International Society for Chemical Ecology and of the International Society for Neuroethology.

Also speaking briefly at the Eisner symposium will be Roald Hoffmann, the Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters at Cornell and a Nobel laureate (1982) in chemistry; poet and author Diane Ackerman; former Cornell presidents Frank H.T. Rhodes and Dale R. Corson; marine biologist Roger Payne; and Jerrold Meinwald, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Cornell and a frequent collaborator with Eisner.

A member of the Cornell biology faculty since 1957 and now 71 years of age, Eisner is universally recognized as the "father of chemical ecology" for nurturing the science that deals with chemical interactions among living organisms. Through vigilant fieldwork studies and innovative experiments in the laboratories of Cornell's Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Eisner and his students and collaborators have learned from nature that chemical interactions profoundly influence all levels of biological organization, from microbes to humans.