Must a great scientist also be a mensch? The historian of science, Silvan Schweber, who teaches at Harvard and Brandeis, has offered some ideal examples in such previous books as “Einstein and Oppenheimer: The Meaning of Genius” from Harvard University Press and “In the Shadow of the Bomb: Oppenheimer, Bethe, and the Moral Responsibility of…
There has been recent news of a curious quirk of the Apple iPhone 4s. If you have one of these phones you can ask Siri, its anthropomorphized virtual assistant, a question and “she” will give you an answer in her robotic voice. Where’s the nearest Thai restaurant? Siri knows. What’s the weather today? Siri will…
You know that scene in “Back to the Future 2” when Michael J. Fox’s character Marty McFly skates on a hover board? It’s no longer just movie magic. Tel Aviv University scientists demonstrated quantum levitation at the Association of Science-Technology Centers annual conference held last week at the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore. The researchers…
May was a good month for the Cedar family. On the heels of Israeli filmmaker Joseph Cedar’s winning the best screenplay award at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival for his film “Footnote,” about Hebrew University Talmud scholar rivals who are father and son, it was announced on May 31st that his father, real-life Hebrew University…
Apparently, there’s no need for Israel to loosen up. So say the results of a psychological and cultural study published on May 27 in the journal Science looking closely at 33 different countries in an effort to better understand cultural differences, and consequently foster better cross-cultural communication and cooperation. A large international team of scientists…
Spacing out was encouraged at this year’s Limmud FSU, an annual cultural and education festival for Russian speakers in Israel. That’s because the history-making guest speaker was Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space when he exited the Voshod 2 ship for 12 minutes in 1965. According to eJewishPhilanthropy, Leonov’s visit to the…
We personally think it’s the power of complaining. But to learn why some Ashkenazim live so long, researchers at Cornell University are about to start studying the stem cells of about a dozen older Jews. According to the New York Post — in a story headlined “Bouncing bubbes of New York” — many Ashkenazi Jews…
Take that, Larry Summers. Israeli scientist (and grandmother!) Ada Yonath, 70, became the first woman since 1964 to win the Nobel Prize in chemistry — and the first Israeli woman ever to do so. According to Nobel Prize selection board, Yonath, together with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan of the U.K. and Thomas Steitz of the U.S., received…
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