Brian Greene, Ph.D. of Columbia University, a string theorist and author of “The Elegant Universe,” will deliver the 2014 Frontier of Science Award Lecture the SCC’s 69th Annual Scientific Meeting & Technology Showcase next month in New York City.

Greene is one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists and an entertaining communicator of cutting-edge scientific concepts, according to many sources. In fact, The Washington Post has described him as “the single best explainer of abstruse concepts in the world today.”

His national bestseller, “The Elegant Universe”—which recounts the theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics—has transformed understanding of the universe and introduced string theory, a concept that might be the key to a unified theory of the universe. The book sold more than a million copies and became an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning NOVA special that Greene hosted.

A Harvard graduate and Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, Greene has been published in Wired magazine and The New York Times and has appeared as himself in a 2011 episode of  “The Big Bang Theory.” He has also been a guest on “Charlie Rose,” “Nightline,” “The Late Show with David Letterman” and “The Colbert Report.”

Greene’s second book, “The Fabric of the Cosmos,” spent six months on The New York Times best sellers list and was also adapted into a NOVA miniseries on PBS.

His latest book, “The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos,” was published in January 2011.
Greene’s SCC lecture topic will be “Breakthrough Thinking: Challenging What We Know.” He will speak during the award luncheon on Thursday, Dec. 11, from 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm.

The  SCC has also announced that  the 2014 Henry Maso Award Lecture, “Color Cosmetics as a Feature of the Extended Human Phenotype,” will be presented by Nancy Etcoff, Ph.D., an assistant clinical professor at the Harvard Medical School, a faculty member of the Harvard University Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative. She is also a psychologist and associate researcher at the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Psychiatry, where she serves as director of the program in aesthetics and well being.

Dr. Etcoff has conducted research on emotion, well-being, beauty and the brain for more than 25 years and has published in high impact academic journals such as Nature and Neuron, Her book, “Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty” has been published in more than a dozen languages, and is the subject of a one-hour Discovery Channel program.

Dr. Etcoff’s work has been cited in many publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker and The Wall Street Journal as well as Cosmopolitan, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Mademoiselle, Vogue, Fortune, Rolling Stone, The New York Review of Books, U.S. News and World Report and Wired.

She has also appeared as a guest on numerous international, national and local television programs in the US including the “Oprah Winfrey Show”and “The Today Show.”

The SCC’s annual scientific meeting is Dec. 11-12, 2014 at the New York Hilton Hotel & Towers.

More info: www.scconline.org