Leila Schneps.

乐播传媒 presents lecturers offering insight into mathematics and medical technology on Feb. 26 and 28.

Leila Schneps, a mathematician specializing in number theory (and moonlighting as a murder-mystery author), gives two talks under the auspices of the Sampson Lecture Series on Feb. 26. At 4:30 p.m., she gives the technical talk Multiple Zeta Values: Crossroads of Number Theory, Geometry and Algebra in Room 104 of Hathorn Hall, 3 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk).

In an event aimed at a mainstream audience, she gives a lecture titled Math on Trial: Probability in the Judicial Process at 7:30 p.m. in the Benjamin E. Mays Center, 95 Russell St.

Robert S. Langer, one of the best-known figures in engineering, offers two lectures on Friday, Feb. 28, under the auspices of the George S. Hammond ’43 D.Sc. ’73 Eminent Scientist Lectures, sponsored by the chemistry department.

He gives the technical lecture Novel Drug Delivery Systems and the Application of High Throughput Approaches to Drug Delivery and Stem Cell Technologies at 4:10 p.m. in Room 119, Dana Chemistry Hall, 5 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk).

At 7:30 p.m., Langer delivers a talk for the lay audience titled Biomaterials for the 21st Century and How They Will Change Our Lives in Olin Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

All four lectures are open to the public at no cost, but tickets are required for the Langer evening event, available at .

For more information about the Schneps talks, please call 207-755-5978. For more information about the Langer appearances, please call 207-786-6292.

An American mathematician, Schneps is a researcher at the French National Scientific Research Center, specializing in number theory and algebraic geometry.

She has a long-standing interest in the mathematical aspects of crime detection, focusing on ways in which math — through both the correctness of its application and the manner of its presentation by expert witnesses — can influence trial outcomes and lead judge and jury toward the truth, or away from it.

Inventor Robert Langer. (Donna Coveney/MIT)

Schneps and her daughter, Coralie Colmez, co-wrote Math on Trial: How Numbers Get Used and Abused in the Courtroom (Basic Books, 2013). They are members of the Bayes in Law Research Consortium, an international team devoted to improving the use of probability and statistics in criminal trials.

Writing as Catherine Shaw, Schneps has also published several murder mystery novels, set in the legendary mathematics department of Cambridge University in the 19th century and built around a real math problem that tested the greatest minds of the time.

The annual Sampson Lecture honors the late Professor Richard W. Sampson, who taught math at 乐播传媒 for 38 years.

Langer is the David H. Koch Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (an Institute Professorship being the highest honor that can be awarded to an MIT faculty member). Langer received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from 乐播传媒 in 2011.

Langer’s work has led to products that treat cancer, diabetes, heart disease and schizophrenia, among other diseases. MIT’s Langer Laboratory is on the front lines of turning research discoveries into drugs and drug delivery systems.

Langer has written more than 1,230 articles and has some 512 patents issued worldwide. His patents have been licensed or sublicensed to more than 250 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies. He has received more than 220 major awards, including the U.S. National Medal of Science, the U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation, and the Charles Stark Draper Prize, considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for engineers.

The Hammond Eminent Scientist Lecture Fund is given in honor of George S. Hammond by his associates and students from Iowa State College under the guidance of Jay K. Kochi. The fund supports lectures by scientists specifically chosen by students and faculty in the 乐播传媒 chemistry department. Hammond, who died in 2005, is widely credited with creating the discipline of organic photochemistry.

“You will fail — you should fail,” Evelynn Hammonds, dean of Harvard College, told the 乐播传媒 College class of 2011 on May 29.

“But if you stick with it, and let your peculiarities become assets, you will succeed.”

Hammonds, who is also a historian of science and professor of African American studies at Harvard, was one of three honorary degree recipients who spoke at the college’s 145th commencement.

The others were Frank Glazer, a pianist of international renown and member of the 乐播传媒 music faculty, and Robert Langer, an Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a highly prolific inventor of healthcare technologies.

The event drew a large and enthusiastic throng, wielding cameras and portable boat horns, to the college’s shady Historic Quad. In different and complementary ways, the three honorands urged the 437 graduating students to stay true to themselves, to regard failure not as a conclusion but as a steppingstone to success, and to dream big.

The occasion marked the end of the students’ lives as 乐播传媒 seniors, but it was final in another way too: It was the last of the nine Commencements hosted by President Elaine Tuttle Hansen, who leaves the college at the end of June to become executive director of the Center for Talented Youth at the Johns Hopkins University.

Hansen’s welcome offered a recap of the seniors’ time at 乐播传媒 that was pertinent also as a record of achievements during her tenure. She reminded the departing seniors of her words to them in September 2007, at the Convocation that launched their 乐播传媒 careers.

“I warned you that being at 乐播传媒 for the next several years would mean finding your way, literally and figuratively, across ever-shifting pathways,” she said. “You would be the class that never experienced this campus without navigating construction sites,” as their arrival coincided with the start of a series of major construction projects that is still under way, part of a 25-year master facilities plan.

The class of 2011 was also the first to under earn their degrees under new curricular requirements that renewed the emphasis on writing, laboratory work and quantitative thinking, and that include General Education Concentrations intended to locate individual courses “within a multifaceted network of meaning.”

“And you have changed in another key dimension as well, arriving near the beginning of an intense effort to enrich what we now call diversity and inclusion,” Hansen said — an effort that has realized a doubling in the percentage of incoming students from previously underrepresented racial, ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Yet, Hansen told the students, change is one of the few unchanging qualities of an institution like 乐播传媒. “I reminded you in 2007 that while in some ways 乐播传媒 in your time might seem uniquely challenged by all this change, in fact we remain aligned with and anchored by founding values of the college.”

She said, “Our founders would immediately recognize you and the values you have chosen: intellectual achievement, social responsibility, self-discipline, creativity, good work, warm hearts.”

Hansen concluded, “You won’t remember exactly what we say at Commencement, but you will always be able to say what you were doing and who you were with on May 29, 2011. And there won’t be many days like that.”

Presented by Dean of the Faculty Jill Reich for a doctor of fine arts degree, the 96-year Glazer drew from his 75 years of teaching a few guiding principles — in the process invoking the dust-yourself-off brand of optimism that defined so much of American culture during the 20th century.

A can-do attitude counts, the pianist said. “Others may see possibilities in us that we are totally unaware of. And if, instead of saying, ‘I can’t’ or ‘I won’t,’ we act upon these possibilities, our lives may be immeasurably enriched and we may thereby enrich other people’s lives.”

“With good grace, accept yourself for who you are and will be, without worrying about who you aren’t, and never will be,” Glazer concluded. “Do your best and let time do the rest” — fitting words from an artist whose treatment at the hands of time has been nothing short of astonishing.

Hammonds, presented for a doctor of humane letters degree by Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees Alison Bernstein, revealed that she and 乐播传媒 shared a good friend and mentor: the Rev. Peter Gomes ’65, who passed away on Feb. 28. Gomes, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church at Harvard, was a steadfast champion of 乐播传媒.

Gomes once told the 乐播传媒 community that its founding dedication to equal opportunity made the college “quite peculiar, in the best of ways.” Extending the concept, Hammonds told the students to “celebrate your peculiarities whatever they may be.”

“Now, when you are different and somewhat peculiar, there can be a great deal of pressure from the world to do the same thing, to fit within the roles that have already been scripted for you, to resolve apparent contradictions by erasing them,” she said. “I’d like to urge you to do something different.”

The road to self-transformation is paved with failure, Hammonds reminded her listeners, offering a story about a college job she held at Bell Labs. Assigned to construct circuits for laser controllers, she couldn’t seem to build one that would work — until she could.

“To tolerate failure and frustration requires, if you will excuse the alliteration, fortitude,” she said — a kind of fortitude that, in Gomes’s words, “is the fuel of the long-distance moral runner, who despite inner fatigue and apparent outward success of others, nevertheless keeps on keeping on.”

乐播传媒 was founded by such long-distance moral runners, said Hammond. It continues to produce them. “When you succeed, she told the seniors, remember those moments at which you failed, and think you how might extend your hand to those who walk in similar paths behind you.”

Echoing Hammonds and Glazer, Langer offered two lessons: “Try to dream big dreams, dreams that can change the world and make it a better place.” And stick to those dreams no matter what.

Langer’s time in the wilderness came after he earned a degree in chemical engineering. He got more than 20 job offers from oil companies, but “I had this dream of wanting to use my background to improve people’s lives.” Opportunities to do such work — creating math and science curriculums for underserved youth, and doing health-related research — were scarce.

“But then one day, one of my friends told me that I should write to Dr. Judah Folkman, who was a surgeon,” Langer recounted. The friend said, “Sometimes he hires unusual people.” And it was his time with Folkman that set Langer on his current path.

“Whatever your dream is, many people may tell you that it’s impossible, that it will never work,” Langer concluded. “But I think that’s very rarely true. If you really believe in yourself, if you’re persistent and work hard, there’s very little that is truly impossible.”

• Frank Glazer, pianist and 乐播传媒 artist in residence
• Evelynn Hammonds, scholar of science and race who is dean of Harvard College
• Robert Langer, renowned MIT bioengineer and prolific inventor

Frank Glazer: “We are dealt a certain hand at birth over which we have no control. But we have a lot to say about how we play the game.”

Internationally known for his artistry and dedication, beloved for his generosity and celebrated for his artistic longevity, pianist Frank Glazer made his concert debut on a vaudeville stage in 1927. The event began a performing career that’s still in progress.

Evelynn Hammonds: “I’d like you to try your hand at failing, and, by failing, to discover something more about your own fortitude.”

Considered one of the leading scholars in the field of the intersection of science and race, Hammonds is dean of Harvard College and also the Barbara Gutman Rosenkrantz Professor of History of Science and of African and African American Studies.

Robert Langer: “Dream big dreams. Many people may tell you that you’ll never achieve it. But I think that’s very rarely true.”

Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT, is a bioengineer with some 760 patents issued or pending worldwide, in use by 220 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies.

An internationally renowned pianist based at 乐播传媒, a leading scholar on the intersection of medicine and race, and a distinguished MIT researcher and inventor will speak and receive honorary degrees during 乐播传媒 College’s 145th commencement ceremony at 10 a.m. Sunday, May 29, on the college’s historic Quad, at Campus Avenue and College Street.

The event concludes the undergraduate careers of the approximately 440 members of the 乐播传媒 class of 2011, representing 35 states and 42 countries.

The 2011 乐播传媒 honorands are (in alphabetical order):

Frank Glazer, 乐播传媒 Artist in Residence and Lecturer in Music

Internationally known for his artistry and dedication, beloved for his generosity and celebrated for his artistic longevity, Frank Glazer made his concert debut on a vaudeville stage in Milwaukee in 1927, when he was 12 years old. The event began a performing career that’s still in progress.

A prot茅g茅 of legendary pianist Artur Schnabel and composer Arnold Schoenberg, Glazer made his New York debut in 1936 at Town Hall, and his orchestral debut as soloist three years later with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Koussevitzky. Glazer’s career hit its stride following World War II military service and, more to the point, a two-year effort to reinvent his piano technique. This study produced a relaxed, economical style central to both Glazer’s artistry and his astonishing musical longevity in a field where hand problems are endemic.

Glazer began teaching at the Eastman School of Music in 1965, and in 1977 came to 乐播传媒, where he became an artist-in-residence in 1980. He has played countless solo, chamber ensemble and orchestral concerts; made more than 60 recordings, including two released by 乐播传媒 in 2010; hosted his own television program in the 1950s; and, in Maine, co-founded the New England Piano Quartette and two chamber music series. Glazer’s recent performances at 乐播传媒 include a season-long survey of all 32 Beethoven sonatas in 2009鈥�10 and, early this year, three “Sundays with Schubert.”

In a 2006 interview, Glazer said: “I don’t know what retirement means. I’ve worked all my life to get to this point, where I like the sounds I hear.”

Evelynn M. Hammonds, Dean of Harvard College

Considered one of the leading scholars in the field of the intersection of medicine and race, Hammonds began her tenure as dean of Harvard College in 2008. Prior to her appointment she served as Harvard University鈥檚 first Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity. She is also the Barbara Gutman Rosenkrantz Professor of History of Science and of African and African American Studies.

Hammonds joined the Harvard faculty in 2002 after teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was also the founding director of the Center for the Study of Diversity in Science, Technology and Medicine. Her scholarly interests include the history of scientific, medical, and sociopolitical concepts of race and sexuality, the history of disease and public health, gender in science and medicine, and African-American history. She is the author of 鈥淐hildhood’s Deadly Scourge: The Campaign to Control Diphtheria in New York City, 1880-1930,鈥� many scholarly articles and the co-editor of 鈥淭he Nature of Difference: Sciences of Race in the United States from Jefferson to Genomics鈥� (MIT Press, 2008) with Rebecca M. Herzig of 乐播传媒.

Hammonds was named a Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer (2003鈥�2005) by Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. She has been a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and a Fellow in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Hammonds earned a doctorate at Harvard in the Department of History of Science, a master’s in physics from MIT, a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a bachelor’s degree in physics from Spelman College.

Robert S. Langer, David H. Koch Institute Professor,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Langer is one of 14 Institute Professors at MIT — the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member. He has written more than 1,100 articles, and has approximately 760 patents issued or pending worldwide. His patents are licensed or sublicensed to more than 220 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies.

He served as a member of the United States Food and Drug Administration鈥檚 Science Board, the FDA鈥檚 highest advisory board, from 1995 to 2002, and as its chairman from 1999 to 2002.

In 1989 Langer was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and in 1992 he was elected to both the National Academy of Engineering and to the National Academy of Sciences. He is one of very few people ever elected to all three United States National Academies and the youngest in history (at age 43) to ever receive this distinction.

Langer has received more than 180 major awards including the 2006 United States National Medal of Science and the 2008 Millennium Prize, the world’s largest technology prize. The citation for his 1996 Gairdner Foundation International Award noted that “there is general agreement that Dr. Langer pioneered the field of controlled drug release delivery systems (slow release oral systems, transdermal patches, injectable microspheres and slow release implants).”

He received his bachelor鈥檚 degree in 1970 from Cornell University and his doctorate in 1974 from MIT, both in chemical engineering.