³ÉÈË´óƬ-³ÉÈË×ÛºÏÍø-ÑÇÖÞ³ÉÈËÉçÇø

Czeslaw Milosz was a Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet. He was born in Lithuania in 1911, and lived in both Nazi and Stalinist Poland. During the Second World War, he wrote and edited resistance publications. After the war, he moved first to Paris, and then to the United States. At the time of his talk, he was teaching Slavic languages and literature at the University of California, Berkeley. A poet, essayist, novelist, critic, and translator, he was best known for a poetic sensibility rooted in the real, political world.

Frank Kermode was an eminent literary critic and King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at Cambridge. At the time of his talk, he had written and edited 25 books of literary criticism, including books on Shakespeare and D. H. Lawrence. Later in his career, he also wrote about the Bible, treating it as a literary text. After serving in WWII, he completed his postgraduate education at Liverpool University before lecturing at King’s College, Newcastle and Durham University.

Stephen J. Gould was an evolutionary scientist, a professor at Harvard, and a leading opponent of scientific creationism. He was also a prominent author. His award-winning book, The Mismeasure of Man, examined the racist misuse of science.

Gordon Brown was a professor of Electrical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an authority on servomechanisms – automatic feedback control systems – and their application to emerging computer technologies. He was born in 1907 in Australia, and graduated with degrees in engineering from MIT in 1931 and 1938, after which he became an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the school. In 1973, he was made an Institute Professor at MIT, a title reserved for the most distinguished faculty members.