Skip to content ↓

Lunch with a Laureate: Eric Chivian

Presented by the MIT Museum and the Cambridge Science Festival

Eric Chivian believes it is important for physicians and other public health professionals to get involved in global environmental issues — that their role is to translate complex and abstract concepts into human health terms.



“Several of us physicians in this anti-nuclear physicians' movement started thinking of these global environmental issues — global climate change, loss of biological diversity, the ozone depletion — as, in effect, Armageddon in slow motion. These changes would cause devastating effects to the planet, to human civilization, by effects on food and water, infectious disease. But they wouldn't be immediate, like a nuclear weapon.” — Eric Chivian
From MIT World


Related Links

Related Topics

More MIT News

Illustrated silhouettes of people's heads, with thought and speech bubbles above

What is language for?

Drawing on evidence from neurobiology, cognitive science, and corpus linguistics, MIT researchers make the case that language is a tool for communication, not for thought.

Read full story