MIT CogNet, an online community for the brain and cognitive sciences, will be launched Thursday, Sept. 28 with the first annual Harry Bradford Stanton Lecture.
Dr. Lila Gleitman, the first Harry Bradford Stanton lecturer, is co-director of the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Pennsylvania, a Fyssen Foundation laureate, and one of the most influential cognitive scientists of our time. Her work is celebrated in the recently published book, Perception, Cognition, and Language: Essays in Honor of Henry and Lila Gleitman.
The lecture, "Does Our Language Affect the Way We Think?" will take place from 7-9pm in Wong Auditorium at the Tang Center (Building E51). The event is free and open to the public. Dr. Gleitman will be introduced by ProfessorSteven Pinker, director of MIT's Center for Cognitive Neurosciences and author of How the Mind Works.
The following day, Dr. Gleitman will make a seminar presentation and discussion based on her work, "Stages of Learning in an Unchanging Machine: Human Simulations of Vocabulary Growth," held from 3-5pm in Bartos Theatre at the MIT Media Lab.
The annual Harry Bradford Stanton Lecture celebrates the legacy of Harry "The Hat" Stanton, the founder of Bradford Books (an imprint of the MIT Press) and an early supporter of the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science. Bradford Books will publish a monograph based on the lecture program.
The event is cosponsored by the MIT Press authors@mit, a series sponsored by MIT Libraries, the MIT Press Bookstore and the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. For more information, call x3-5249 or x8-0583, send e-mail to authors@mit.edu.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on September 27, 2000.
