SHASS News

Alan Lightman has spent much of his authorial career writing about scientific discovery, the boundaries of knowledge, and remarkable findings from the world of research. His latest book “The Shape of Wonder,” co-authored with the lauded English astrophysicist Martin Rees and published this month by Penguin Random House, offers both profiles of scientists and an […]

Everyone gets headaches. But not everyone gets cluster headache attacks, a debilitating malady producing acute pain that lasts an hour or two. Cluster headache attacks come in sets — hence the name — and leave people in complete agony, unable to function. A little under 1 percent of the U.S. population suffers from cluster headache. […]

In an unhappy coincidence, the Covid-19 pandemic and Angie Jo’s doctoral studies in political science both began in 2019. Paradoxically, this global catastrophe helped define her primary research thrust. As countries reacted with unprecedented fiscal measures to protect their citizens from economic collapse, Jo MCP ’19 discerned striking patterns among these interventions: Nations typically seen […]

The late Jamshied Sharifi ’83 sought transcendence in music-making.

In World War II, Britain was fighting for its survival against German aerial bombardment. Yet Britain was importing dyes from Germany at the same time. This sounds curious, to put it mildly. How can two countries at war with each other also be trading goods? Examples of this abound, actually. Britain also traded with its […]