Conversation with the Director,
Professor Sir Hans Kornberg
What led you to Boston University and to the University Professors Program?
Until the Fall of 1995, I was the Sir William Dunn Professor of Biochemistry, and the Master of Christ's College, in the University of Cambridge. 1995 was also the year in which I reached what in that University was the mandatory retirement age. Knowing that I certainly did not propose to abandon academic pursuits and that I was interested
in more than my scientific specialty, kind friends at B.U. invited me to join the UNI Program. Needless to say, I accepted with alacrity: the opportunity to teach highly gifted students in a manner that combined 'hard' science with the philosophy, history and societal implications of the ideas and experiments that led the to our present understanding, and also to remain active in laboratory-based research, was irresistible. Moreover, it was only in the UNI Program that such Science courses were, from the outset, necessarily combined with studies of topics in the Humanities and in the Social Sciences - the aim was, clearly, to achieve a broadly based education rather than training for any particular job or career , and to emphasize the methods by which knowledge and understanding are accrued and expressed.
Is the interdisciplinary model what you enjoy most about teaching in the Program?
Definitely. To give an example of the way disciplines can merge in the University Professors Program, I designed a course called "The Language of Heredity". How would one even begin to determine how like begets like - why we are both similar to, but also profoundly different from, our parents? If we need more offspring to study than humans can produce, and are reluctant to wait for some 20 years for each new generation to appear, can we instead investigate the properties of simpler model organisms? How do we know that the results obtained are applicable to humans? How do we know that the laws of physics and chemistry apply also to genetics? What are genes - what do they do and how and when are they expressed? And what are the ethical, medical, and political implications of the information which has led us now to be able to manipulate our very essence and to determine our future evolution? These are the kinds of questions we examine, and they touch on many disciplines that, at first sight, may not have appeared to be even remotely relevant.
What are the strengths of the University Professors Program for students?
If I may quote the wise words of my predecessor, Professor Redford, " the Program’s greatest strength is its combination of thoughtful structure and guided freedom. Our program starts by building a broad base for all undergraduates—they take six courses to fulfill core requirements and then they begin to focus. Eventually they complete a
year-long senior project that is intended to cross disciplinary boundaries. It is very difficult to create an authentically interdisciplinary teaching program; the core curriculum is key to this exercise because it gives students with a wide variety of backgrounds and interests a shared set of analytical tools, which they can then apply and adopt as they begin to focus on their own specific area of inquiry".
What are your goals for the University Professors Program?
We live in an age in which new findings in Science importantly impinge on our lives. This is particularly noticeable in Biology: there are almost daily reports of discoveries of the properties of stem cells, of the rational design novel drugs, of the genetical and molecular bases of diseases such as cancers and neurological dysfunctions, of the
manipulation of human fertility, and many others, that require at least an intelligent layman's understanding of the factors involved before one can decide what Society ought to do about them. A broad interdisciplinary program such as that offered by UNI will, I hope, prepare such an understanding, as well as lay the foundations for subsequent specialization for those students who wish to pursue Graduate studies or engage in commerce, industry, or the practice of law.
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