Events - Event View

Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Max Ernst, and Duke Ellington have all been described as creative geniuses.  Yet, one was an engineer, one was a scientist, one was a visual artist, and one was a musical composer.    This lecture will explore the meaning of creativity and genius by looking at the lives and work of four giants and others who have been given the title genius.  Are invention, scientific discovery, and artistic production essentially the same human endeavor?  What are the similarities and differences?  If they are distinct activities, can the concept of genius somehow link them together, or is genius another idea that has different meanings in different contexts?  Tune in to find out.

Our speaker, Michael Geselowitz, PhD is Senior Director of the IEEE History Center. Through an arrangement between Stevens Institute of Technology and IEEE, Geselowitz is currently Industry Associate Professor of History of Engineering at Stevens.  Immediately prior to joining IEEE in 1997, he was Group Manager at Eric Marder Associates, a New York market research firm, where he supervised Ph.D. scientists and social scientists undertaking market analyses for Fortune 500 high-tech companies. Geselowitz holds S.B. degrees in electrical engineering and in anthropology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in anthropology from Harvard University. His research focus has been on the history and social relations of technology. He has worked as an electronics engineer for the Department of Defense, and he has held teaching and research positions relating to the social study of technology at M.I.T., Harvard, and Yale University, including a stint as Assistant Collections Manager/Curator at Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. 

A Partnership Between Little Falls Village & The Little Falls Library of Montgomery County Public Libraries