Popular lectures
jhalper | May 7, 2015Next week is a big week for science in Israel. Tuesday is National Science Day, and Thursday is the annual Science on Tap talks in the bars and restaurants of Tel Aviv. Don't know about National Science Day -- this science writer will just point out that of all the minstries that are being fought over tooth and nail in our new government, the Ministry of Science does not even appear the list.
Science on Tap, however, is gearing up with the splash it deserves. Here is the main drag outside the huge Azrieli complex:
So if you're in or around Tel Aviv next week, check it out. All the talks…
jhalper | February 26, 2015 Manot Cave cranium
With a skull and Keats, there was little choice but to write about the new online items in rhyme. So with apologies to Shakespeare, Keats and the scientists, as well as the people at SpaceIL, here are today's grab bag of poems. As usual, follow the links.
On a Lone Cranium
Alas poor Yorick – We can only know
Where you lived all those eons ago
Walking, did you take those others in stride;
Human, yet strange, as they strode alongside?
Did your children wander forth,
Searching for a greener North?
Can your skull, a bit of bone,
Tell us where our seeds were sown?
To…
jhalper | May 4, 2014Science on Tap, which happened in Tel Aviv last Weds. eve, was as great a success as ever. Ariela Saba, one of our Weizmann writers, attended one of the talks. Here is her report:
Right around now – in some 55 bars all around Tel Aviv and Jaffa – Weizmann Institute scientists are starting their talks. Some of the patrons are in the middle of dinner; others are already sipping after-dinner drinks. Here in The Container at the Jaffa port, Dr. Eran Elinav is just warming up. From where I am sitting, I can see into the kitchen: Plates are making their way out laden with fluffy white bread, butter…
jhalper | May 7, 2013Poetry is finding its way into our consciousness at the Weizmann Institute: At the recent, fourth annual Science on Tap evening, which the Institute hosts in Tel Aviv, several poets joined in the fun, reading from their work before and after the talks given by scientists in over 60 filled-to-capacity pubs and cafes around the city. And calls have gone out for entries to the Ofer Lider creative writing contest – open to scientists (writing in Hebrew). The contest is named for Prof. Ofer Lider, an Institute scientist who, sadly, died young and who wrote poetry because he believed that…
jhalper | August 12, 2012We recently witnessed the disagreement over the official memorial for the 11 Israeli athletes killed at the Munich Olympics 40 years ago. Fewer remember the terrorist attack in the Lod airport a few months earlier – in May – in which 24 people lost their lives. One of those was the head of the Weizmann Institute’s Polymer’s Department, Prof. Aharon Katzir. (Somewhat ironically, in light of the later attack, Katzir had just returned from Germany, where he had co-organized a conference with Nobel laureate Manfred Eigen.)
Aharon Katzir
Aharon Katzir and his brother, Ephraim, who would later…
jhalper | May 1, 2012
No, the woman with the microphone is not crooning lounge songs to customers. That is Prof. Deborah Fass, and she is explaining the latest structural biology research in her lab.
And this is Weizmann Institute president Prof. Daniel Zajfman in an official Science on Tap 2012 T shirt giving pub goers a talk on the economic and social importance of basic science.
No matter how big we make the yearly Science on Tap event, it is never big enough. Those who don't make their reservations in time are left out on the sidewalk straining to hear. People have been writing and calling begging us to…
jhalper | April 15, 2012Explain to a pub full of beer drinkers exactly what it is you do in your lab. That's the idea behind Science on Tap, which will be taking place again this year in bars, coffee shops and restaurants in the heart of Tel Aviv's entertainment district at the end of the month.
A Science on Tap billboard like this hangs over the entrance to Tel Aviv - the number has since risen to 55
This one is the biggest event yet: Over 55 Weizmann professors, doctoral students and assorted researchers have volunteered to spend an evening talking about their science to a public out looking for information and…
jhalper | January 8, 2012The actors on the stage work their magic, turning a few disparate phrases - "challenge, giving birth, infinity, chaos, visiting a new country" - into a brief but charming improvised sketch, to the delight of the audience. But the viewers, filling a large auditorium at the Weizmann Institute of Science, expect more than to be entertained. Since the improvised play is part of a lecture by Prof. Uri Alon, a Molecular Cell Biologist, they know scientific insights are bound to follow.
Indeed. Combining his two passions, science and theater, Alon has recently created a "theater lab" on the…
jhalper | July 29, 2011One Thursday evening near the end of July, people sitting outside a local ice cream parlor watched a neurobiology Ph.D. student wave his hand in front of his face in imitation of a robot learning to sense itself as separate from its surroundings. Despite the trains arriving at the station in the background and the microphone feedback from a rival talk at an outdoor coffee shop across the plaza, the audience was engrossed in hearing how this simple robot, mostly built of Lego and a camera, is able to explore its environment in the same way a baby does.
All across the city of Rehovot,…
jhalper | April 26, 2011The other week, while many Israelis stayed home to clean their kitchens before the upcoming Passover holiday and thousands of preteens were screaming themselves hoarse over Justin Bieber in a Tel-Aviv park, another sort of cultural event was taking place nearby. Following the success of the beer and science event in Rehovot, we took Weizmann scientists and students to the bars and cafes of Tel Aviv.
No one was quite sure if it would work. Rehovot, after all, is the city of science, while Tel Aviv is the city of culture - of music, art and theater. But, it's also the city of nightlife, and it…
jhalper | March 22, 2011
Is having a beer and sandwich at the local pub the best way to improve your brain awareness? At least in the city of Rehovot one evening last week, those eating and drinking in a few select establishments got to hear Weizmann Institute neurobiology graduate students give informal talks and demonstrations. The event was a part of Brain Awareness week, an annual, international affair. The aim is not really to make people more aware of their brains (or their brains more aware), but to promote brain research.
Some participated in an experiment in which they found that a smell can help imprint…
jhalper | August 1, 2010Are quantum physics more intelligible after a beer or two? That might be an illusion, but you wouldn't know it from the enthusiastic crowd who packed a Rehovot restaurant/pub last Thursday evening to hear a talk on the subject given by one of the Weizmann Institute's research students. Even those imbibing out on the tiny, sweltering balcony, where the sound system barely reached, found themselves enjoying the atmosphere and the question-and-answer session, which continued on for over an hour after the talk.
That scene repeated itself across town, from the Irish pub in the nearby science…