Nobel Conference

Svante Pääbo at the 2014 Conference

Gustavus Adolphus College was founded by Swedish immigrants in 1862 and throughout its history, has continued to honor its Swedish heritage. As the College prepared to build a new science hall in the early 1960s, College officials asked the Nobel Foundation for permission to name the building the Alfred Nobel Hall of Science as a memorial to the great Swedish inventor and philanthropist. Permission was granted, and the facility's dedication ceremony in 1963[1] included 26 Nobel laureates and officials from the Nobel Foundation.[2]

Following the 1963 Nobel Prize ceremonies in Stockholm, College representatives met with Nobel Foundation officials, asking them to endorse an annual science conference at the College and to allow use of the Nobel name to establish credibility and high standards. At the urging of several prominent Nobel laureates, the foundation granted the request and the first conference was held at the College in January 1965.[3]

Beginning with the help of an advisory committee composed of Nobel laureates such as Glenn Seaborg, Philip Showalter Hench, and Sir John Eccles, the conferences have been consistently successful in attracting the world's foremost authorities as speakers.

Past speakers have included David H. Hubel, Fritz Lipmann, Sir Harold Walter Kroto, and Mitchell Jay Feigenbaum.

Fifty-nine Nobel laureates have served as speakers, five of whom were awarded the Nobel prize after speaking at the Nobel conference at Gustavus.

The Nobel conference has a focus on scientific topics such as "Medicine: Prescription for Tomorrow" (2006), "The Legacy of Einstein" (2005), "The Science of Aging" (2004), "The Nature of Nurture" (2002), "Virus: The Human Connection" (1998), and "The New Shape of Matter: Materials Challenge Science" (1995). The social sciences are also well represented and many topics are interdisciplinary; focusing on economics, politics, the social sciences, and philosophy.

The Nobel conference is open to the general public.

Nobel Conference 58 happened September 28 & 29, 2022 and will address mental health disparities and their effects on youth, with a particular emphasis on the significance of identity, trauma and technology.

Confirmed 2022 Speakers

• Meryl Alper, Associate Professor of Communication Studies, Northeastern University
  • Supporting Mental Health among Autistic Youth in the Digital Age
• Manuela Barreto, Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology, University of Exeter
  • It takes a village to make someone lonely.
• Daniel Eisenberg, Professor, Department of Health Policy and Management, UCLA
  • Investing in Youth Mental Health at a Population Scale
• Joseph P. Gone, Professor of Anthropology and of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard
  • Anticolonial Approaches to Community Mental Health Services for American Indians: Enacting AlterNative Psy-ence
• Priscilla Lui, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Southern Methodist University
  • Scientific understanding of racism and discrimination experiences: A path toward mental healthequity
• G. Nic Rider, Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Transgender Health Program, Institute for Sexual and Gender Health, and Associate Director for Research, National Center for Gender Spectrum Health, University of Minnesota Medical School
  • Radical Healing and Inclusive Change-Making: Centering Transgender and Gender Diverse Communities
• Brendesha Tynes, Associate Professor of Education and Psychology, USC
  • A Day in the Online Lives of Black Adolescents and What it Tells Us About Mental Health Equity

The 2021 Nobel Conference was "Big Data REvolution" and took place October 5–6, 2021 in Saint Peter, Minnesota at Gustavus Adolphus College.[4]

Lecturers included:

• Talithia Williams, PhD: Professor of Mathematics, Harvey Mudd College
  • Data-Driven Decision Making, Now and Imagined
• Francesca Dominici, PhD Clarence James Gamble Professor of Biostatistics, Population and Data Science; Co-Director, the Data Science Initiative, Harvard University
  • How Much Evidence Do You Need? Data Science to Inform Environmental Policy During the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Michael Osterholm, PhD A Regents Professor and McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair in Public Health; Director, Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota
  • From the Village Watchman to Actionable Data: A Challenging Journey
• Cynthia Rudin, PhD Professor of Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Statistical Science; Director, Prediction Analysis Lab, Duke University
  • Interpretable Machine Learning
• Pilar Ossorio, JD, PhD Professor of Law and Bioethics, University of Wisconsin
  • Justice in Machine Learning and AI for Health Care
• Rhema Vaithianathan, PhD Professor of Health Economics; Director, Centre for Social Data Analytics, Auckland University of Technology
  • Chile Protection: Too Much and Not Enough
• Wendy Chun, PhD Canada 150 Research Chair; Leader, the Digital Democracies Institute, Simon Fraser University
  • Discriminating Data: Correlations, Neighborhoods and the New Politics of Recognition

Lecturers Included:

• Carl June - Engineering the Immune System as a New Tool for Cancer Therapy
• Chanita Hughes-Halbert - Transformational Research in Cancer Health Disparities
• Jim Thomas - Creating Global Access to Biologic Therapeutics for Treating Cancer and Other Serious Diseases
• Kathryn Schmitz - Exercise Oncology: Balancing Evidence with the Need to Implement
• Suzanne Chambers - A Dialogue About The Care of the Patient
• Charles Sawyers - Are There Magic Bullets for Cancer?
• Bissan Al-Lazikani - Big Data and AI: Hype? Monster? Or the Future of Healthcare?

Lectures Included:

• Amitav Ghosh (Not Archived by request)
• Richard Alley - Climate Has Always Changed, Sometimes Abruptly: More Evidence That Humans are Changing the Climate
• Diana Liverman - How Can We Respond to Climate Change and Meet Our Goals for Sustainable Development?
• Sheila Watt-Cloutier - Everything is Connected: Environment, Economy, Foreign Policy, Sustainability, Human Rights and Leadership in the 21st Century
• Gabriele Hegerl - Models and Observations in Climate Change: Understanding the Past, Predicting the Future
• David Keith - How Might Solar Geoengineering Fit into Sound Climate Policy
• Mike Hulme - Beyond Climate Solutionism

Lectures Included

• David Montgomery - Growing a Revolution: Bringing our Soil Back to Life
• Claire Chenu - Organic Matter as a "Soil-ution" to Global Challenges?
• Rattan Lal - Soil Carbon Sequestration for Advancing Global Food Security and Enhancing Resilience Against Climate Change
• Frank Uekotter - Knowledge is Power, and so is Ignorance
• Ray Archuleta - Healing the Land, One Heart and One Mind at a Time
• Jack Gilbert - The Earth Microbiome Project
• Suzanne Simard - The Hidden Pathways of the Otherworld

Lecturers include:

• Jad Abumrad, founder and co-host of Radiolab.
  • Reproductive Technology
• Alison Murdoch, Professor of Reproductive Medicine at Newcastle University, past member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics; one of the first people in the world to have been granted approval to clone human embryos for the purpose of research.
  • Reproductive Technology Regulation in the UK: 40-Year Review
• Ruha Benjamin, Sociologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University.
  • Rethinking Reproduction, Re-imagining Technology
• Diana Blithe, program director for the Male Contraceptive Development Program at the National Institutes of Health.
  • Prospects and Pipeline for Male Contraception
• Charis Thompson, Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science.
  • The End of the World As We Know It? Human Technology Futures in a Time of Automation, Augmentation, and Deselection
• Jacob Corn
  • CRISPR Gene Editing
• Marsha Saxton
  • Disability Rights Meets DNA Research

Lecturers included:

• Dan Ariely, Ph.D, Behavioral Economist and chief behavioral economist for Qapital.
  • The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty
• Paul Collier, Ph.D, British Economist, director of the International Growth Centre, and former director of the Development Research Group of the World Bank
  • Africa's Prospects in a Difficult Decade
• Deirdre McCloskey, Ph.D, Economic Historian
  • How the World Grew Rich: The Liberal Idea, Not Accumulation or Exploitation
• Orley Ashenfelter, Ph.D, Economist, former director of the Office of Evaluation of the U.S. Department of Labor and professor of economics at Princeton University
  • Comparing Real Wages around the World: Inequality in Human Wealth
• Joerg Rieger, Ph.D, Theologian
  • What Does Jesus Have to Do with Wall Street
• John A. List, Ph.D, Economist, Distinguished Service Professor in Economics and the Chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago.
  • Using Field Experiments to Make the World a Better Place
• Chris Farrell, Economic Journalist and economics editor for Marketplace Money on American Public Media.
  • On Economic Inclusion

Lecturers included:

• Owen Flanagan, Ph.D, James B. Duke Professor and Faculty Fellow in Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University
  • Willing Addicts? Drinkers, Dandies, Druggies, and other Dionysians
• Eric R. Kandel, MD, Neuropsychiatrist and 2000 Nobel laureate in physiology and medicine
  • We Are What We Remember: Memory and Age Related Memory Disorders
• Carl Hart, Ph.D, Neuroscientist
  • Why Drug-related Research is Biased: Who Benefits and Who Pays
• Denise Kandel, Ph.D, Medical sociologist
  • Molecular Basis for the Gateway Hypothesis
• Marc David Lewis, Ph.D, Developmental neuroscientist
  • Reflections on the Science and Experience of Addiction
• Sheigla B. Murphy, Ph.D, Director of the Center for Substance Abuse Studies at the Institute for Scientific Analysis
  • Understanding Prescription Drug Misuse from a Sociological Perspective

Steven Chu at the 2014 Conference

Lecturers included:

• Steven Weinberg (Physics '79), Ph.D, Theoretical physicist and 1979 Nobel laureate in physics
  • Glimpses of a Hidden World
• Sir Harold W. Kroto, (Chemistry '96) Ph.D, 1996 Nobel laureate in chemistry
  • How to Survive and preview lecture The Birth of Natural Philosophy and Its Son: Science
• Steven Chu, (Physics '97), Ph.D, 12th United States Secretary of Energy and 1997 Nobel laureate in physics
  • Energy and Climate Change
• Antonio Damasio, MD, PhD, Neuroscientist and head of the Brain and Creativity Institute
  • The Consciousness Issue
• Harry B. Gray, PhD, Electron transfer (ET) chemist
  • Solar- Driven Water Splitting
• Freeman Dyson, FRS, Theoretical physicist and mathematician
  • Living through Four Scientific Revolutions
• Patricia Smith Churchland, Neurophilosopher
  • The Brains behind Morality
• Jennifer West
  • Nanotechnology and Biomedical Engineering
• Svante Pääbo
  • Of Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Modern Humans
• W. Gary Ernst
  • Earth Resources, Global Equity, and Future Sustainability
• Sean B. Carroll
  • Evolution at the Molecular and Planetary Scale: A Tale of Two Biologies

Lecturers included:

• Frank A. Wilczek (Physics '04) Ph.D, American theoretical physicist, Mathematician, 2004 Nobel laureate in physics, discovered time crystal in 2012.
  • Geometric Fantasy
• Samuel C.C. Ting (Physics '76) Ph.D, American theoretical physicist and 1976 Nobel laureate in physics for discovering the subatomic J/ψ particle.
  • The Alpha-magnetic Spectrometer Experiment on the International Space Station
• George F. Smoot III (Physics '06) Ph.D, 2006 Nobel laureate in physics
  • Mapping the Universe and Its History
• Alexei V. Filippenko, Ph.D, American astrophysicist on supernovae and active galaxies at optical, ultraviolet, and near-infrared wavelengths.
  • Dark Energy and the Runaway Universe
• S. James Gates Jr., Ph.D, theoretical physicist known for work on supersymmetry, supergravity, and superstring theory.
  • The Audience of Nature
• Lawrence M. Krauss, Ph.D, American-Canadian theoretical physicist and cosmologist
  • A Universe from Nothing
• Tara G. Shears, Ph.D, Physicist
  • The Innermost Universe: Exploring the Subatomic Frontier
• Fr. George V. Coyne, SJ
  • Quantum Cosmology and Creation

• • Lecturers Included:
    • Barbara Block – Sushi and Satellites: Tracking Large Predators in the Blue Serengeti
    • William Fitzgerald – Mercury, Microbes, Mosquitoes, and More…
    • David Gallo – Beyond Titanic – What’s Left to be Discovered in the Deep Sea
    • Ove Hoegh-Guldberg – Coral Reefs in a Rapidly Changing Climate: Going, Going, Gone?
    • Kathleen Dean Moore – Red Sky at Morning: Ethics and the Oceanic Crisis
    • Christopher Sabine – What Does Midwest Coal Have to Do with the Price of Shellfish in Seattle? Understanding How Fossil Fuels Contribute to Ocean Acidification
    • Carl Safina – Caught in the Same Net: The Ocean and Us
    • Maya Tolstoy – Our Global Ocean Floor

• • Lecturers Included:
    • John Donoghue – Merging Mind to Machines: Brain Computer Interfaces to Restore Lost Function
    • Martha Farah – 21st-Century Neuroscience: From Lab and Clinic to Home, School, and Office
    • Paul W. Glimcher – The Neurobiology of Decision-Making
    • Helen Mayberg – Mapping Depression Circuits: Foundation for New Treatment Strategies Using Direct Brain Stimulation
    • Nancey Murphy – Did My Neurons Make Me Do It? A Philosophical and Cognitive Science Analysis of Moral Responsibility
    • Aniruddh D. Patel – Music and Biological Evolution
    • Vilayanur Ramachandran – The Neurology of Human Nature
    • Larry J. Young – The Monogamous Brain: Implications for Novel Therapies for Autism

• • Lecturers Included:
    • Bina Agarwal – Can We Make Food Good for All?
    • Linda Bartoshuk – Variation in Sensation and Affect: We Live in “Different Taste Worlds”
    • Cary Fowler – Food Security in a Frightening and Finite World
    • Jeffrey Friedman – Leptin and the Biologic Basis of Obesity Transcript of lecture
    • Frances Moore Lappé – Getting a Grip—Gaining Clarity, Creativity, and Courage for the World We Really Want
    • Marion Nestle – Food Politics: Personal Responsibility vs. Social Responsibility
    • Paul Thompson – What Is Good Food? An Argument with My Wife
      • Additional Participants:
        • Mitch Davis – Panel speaker for Minnesota Food Forum
        • Martin Lang – Screening of Farming Forward
        • Jeff Larson – Panel speaker for Minnesota Food Forum
        • Thomas Nuessmeier – Panel speaker for Minnesota Food Forum
        • Margo O’Brien – Panel speaker for Minnesota Food Forum

• • Lecturers Included:
    • Asit K. Biswas – Water Crisis: Myth or Reality?
    • Peter H. Gleick – Water for the 21st Century: New Thinking
    • William L. Graf – Where the Wild Things Are: Dams, Rivers, and Wildlife Preservation
    • Rajendra K. Pachauri (Peace '07) – Climate Change and Global Peace
    • Nancy N. Rabalais – Nutrients, Nutrients Everywhere and Not a Drop to Drink: Land Meets the Sea
    • Larry L. Rasmussen – Just Water
    • David L. Sedlak – Short-Circuiting the Hydrologic Cycle to Meet Urban Water Needs
      • Additional Participants:
        • Erin Binder – The Acara Challenge: Applying Corporate Best Practices to Local, Sustainable Water Solutions
        • Steve Colman – The Superior Sea: What about All That Water?
        • Lucinda Johnson – Minnesota’s Aquatic Ecosystems: What Can We Expect under a Changing Climate?
        • Shawn Lawrence Otto – Democracy in the Age of Science
        • Fred Rose – The Acara Challenge: Applying Corporate Best Practices to Local, Sustainable Water Solutions
        • Edward Swain – Climate Change Impacts on Lakes – The Mercury Example

• • Lecturers Included:
    • Robin Dunbar – Mind the Gap: Why Humans Aren’t Just Great Apes
    • Marcus Feldman – The History of Migration and Selection Seen through the Human Genome
    • J. Wentzel van Huyssteen – Human Origins and Religious Awareness – An Interdisciplinary Challenge for Theology?
    • Curtis Marean – The African Evidence for the Origins of Modern Human Behavior
    • Svante Pääbo – A Neandertal View of Human Origins
    • Dennis Stanford – The Ice-Age Discovery of the Americas: Constructing an Iberian Solution
      • Additional Participants:
      • Scott Anfinson – Finding Minnesota: The First People of the North Star State
      • Guy Gibbon – After the PaleoIndians: Archaic and Woodland Peoples in Minnesota
      • Rod Johnson – Flintknapping Demonstration
      • Tom Sanders – Atlatl Dart Throwing Demonstration

• • Lecturers Included:
    • Steven Chu (Physics '97) – The World’s Energy Problem and What We Can Do about It
    • Kenneth S. Deffeyes – Peak Oil: Here and Now
    • James E. Hansen – The Threat to the Planet: The Dark and Bright Sides of Global Warming
    • Paul L. Joskow – Placing a Price on Greenhouse Gas Emissions
    • Lee Rybeck Lynd – Biofuels: Technology, Challenges, and Their Role in a Sustainable World
    • Joan M. Ogden – Prospects for Hydrogen Energy
    • Will Steger – The Front Lines of Global Warming – Will Steger’s Eyewitness Account
      • Additional Participants:
        • Doug Cameron – Advances in Biofuels: Ethanol and Beyond
        • J. Drake Hamilton – Global Warming: Minnesota Impacts, Minnesota Solutions
        • Bishop Craig Johnson – Care for Our World’s Resources: A Biblical Perspective
        • Dan Juhl – Community-Based Energy: Local Ownership of Renewable Energy

• • Lecturers Included:
    • Henry J. Aaron – Healthcare in America: Three Paradoxes
    • J. Michael Bishop (Medicine '89) – Entering the Genomic Era
    • Daniel Callahan – Affordable Healthcare: Reforming the Idea of Medical Progress
    • James Orbinski – Family emergency prevented him from attending.
    • Michael T. Osterholm – A Modern World and Infectious Diseases: A Collision Course Transcript of lecture
    • Dame Julia M. Polak – Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine
    • Jennifer L. West – Biomimetic and Biofunctional Materials

• • Lecturers Included:
    • George F.R. Ellis – The Existence of Life in the Universe and the Crucial Issue of Ethics
    • Wendy Freedman – The Legacy of Albert Einstein for Cosmology
    • S. James Gates Jr. – Is Cosmic Concordance in Concomitance with Superstring/M-Theory?
    • Wolfgang Ketterle (Physics '01) – Bose-Einstein Condensates and Other New Forms of Matter Close to Absolute Zero
    • Thomas Levenson – The Education of Albert Einstein
    • Kip S. Thorne – Warped Spacetime: Einstein’s General Relativity Legacy

• • Lecturers Included:
    • Avshalom Caspi, Social, Genetic, and Developmental Psychiatry Research Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Madison
      • The Child Is Father to the Man: Personality Development from Childhood to Adulthood
    • Jerome Kagan, Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Author of Galen’s Prophecy
      • The Tapestry Woven by Biology and Experience
    • Eric R. Kandel (Medicine '00), Center for Neurobiology and Behavior, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York
      • Genes, Synapses, and Long Term Memory
    • Eleanor E. Maccoby, Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, Author of Patterns of Child Rearing and Psychology of Sex Differences
      • The Nature of Children and Their Nurture by Parents
    • Thomas H. Murray, President, The Hastings Center, Garrison, New York, Author of The Worth of a Child
      • Parents and Children: What We Value and How That Is Challenged by Cloning and New Reproductive Technologies
    • Robert Plomin, Social, Genetic, and Developmental Psychiatry Research Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, Author of Genetics and Experience: The Interplay between Nature and Nurture
      • Nature and Nurture: Genetic and Environmental Influences on Behavioral Development
    • Judith L. Rapoport, Chief, Child Psychiatry Branch, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland, Author of The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Washing
      • Normal and Abnormal Brain Development in Children and Adolescents

• • Lecturers Included:
    • Günter Blobel (Medicine '99), John D. Rockefeller Jr. Professor, The Rockefeller University, New York, and Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
      • Protein Targeting
    • Edmond H. Fischer (Medicine '92), Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry, University of Washington, Seattle
      • How Proteins Speak to One Another in Cell Signaling
    • Roald Hoffman (Chemistry '81), Franklin H.T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
      • Science and Ethics: A Marriage of Necessity and Choice for This Millennium
    • Sir Harold W. Kroto (Chemistry '96), Royal Society Research Professor, University of Sussex, Brighton, England
      • Science: A Round Peg in a Square World
    • Sir John R. Maddox, Author of What Remains to Be Discovered and Former Editor of Nature, London, England
      • What Remains to Be Discovered
    • Erling C.J. Norrby, Secretary General, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden
      • A Century of Nobel Prizes
    • Stanley B. Prusiner (Medicine '97), Professor of Neurology and Biochemistry, University of California School of Medicine, San Francisco, and Professor of Virology, University of California School of Public Health, Berkeley
      • Mad Cows, Demented People, and the Biology of Prions

Lecturers included:

• Robert A. Mundell, (Economics '99), Professor of Economics, Columbia University, New YorkPh.D, Economist and 1999 Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
  • Does a Global Economy Need a Global Currency?
• Joseph Stiglitz, Ph.D, former Chief Economist of the World Bank and recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001, Joan Kenney Professor of Economics, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, Former Chief Economist, The World Bank, Washington, D.C., Senior Fellom, The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.
  • Globalization, Equity, and the Developing World
• Jeffrey D. Sachs, PH.D, Economist, since 2017 serves as special adviser to the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade, Harvard University, and Director, Center for International Development at Harvard University (CID), Cambridge, Massachusetts
  • New Approaches to Helping the Poorest of the Poor in the Global Economy
• Jagdish Natwarlal Bhagwati, PH.D, Economist, Arthur Lehman Professor of Economics and Professor of Political Science, Columbia University, New York
  • Globalization and Appropriate Governance
• Amitai Etzioni, PH.D, former senior adviser to the White House, University Professor, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
  • The Future of the Global Community

Lecturers Included:

• • • Theodosius Dobzhansky - The Pattern of Human Evolution
    • Sir John C. Eccles (Medicine '63) - The Experiencing Self
    • Ernan McMullin - Man's Effort to Understand the Universe
    • W.H. Thorpe - Vitalism and Organicism
    • S.L. Washburn - The Evolution of Human Behavior
    • Daniel Day Williams - The Prophetic Dimension

• • Lecturers Included:
    • Sir John C. Eccles (Medicine '63) - Evolution and the Conscious Self
    • James M. Gustafson - Christian Humanism and the Human Mind
    • Holger Hyden - Biochemical Aspects of Learning and Memory
    • Seymour S. Kety - Biochemical Aspects of Mental States
    • Francis O. Schmitt - Molecular Parameters in Brain Function
    • Huston Smith - Human versus Artificial Intelligence
    • Nils K. Stahle - The Nobel Foundation at Work

'[7]

• Nobel Conference official website
• Archival finding aid for the collection Nobel Conference. Nobel Conference Collection, 1965-Ongoing. GACA Collection 92. Gustavus Adolphus College Archives, St. Peter, Minnesota.