Can science ever be truly hip? Nobel laureate Roald Hoffmann and a small band of ambitious colleagues think so. To prove it, they're calling folks who dig science to New York's Greenwich Village, the former stomping ground of Beat poets, hippies, and other cool cats.
Biologist Lynn Margulis waxes poetic during science salon at a New York café.
Hoffmann and company are organizing a monthly salon--called Entertaining Science--at the trendy Cornelia Street Café to show that research isn't all nerds in lab coats. If the success of the first meeting on 6 January is any indication, they are onto something. More than 70 people crammed into a small cabaret setting, complete with tiny tables and red spotlights, and many were turned away at the door. The theme of the evening was "Thermodynamics and the Meaning of Life." It featured unusual moments such as noted biologist Lynn Margulis reciting Emily Dickinson poems. The rap may have been heavy on the meaning of life and light on thermodynamics, but Hoffmann says the point is to "sneak in some science and yet have fun."
February's theme will be "What's So Funny About Science?" with a collection of science humorists, followed in March by "The Will to Live and Selfish DNA" with tumor biologist George Klein of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. In April, author Diane Ackerman and others will talk about "Art and the Brain, Art on the Brain."
"The general idea is to play with ideas," says Hoffmann, a chemist and poet at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The salon takes place at 6 p.m. on the first Sunday of the month, and there is a cover charge.
