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"Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know".
Why do Scientists have such a bad press?
by Professor Roslynn Haynes
School of English, University of NSW
8:00PM,
Tuesday 16 July, 2002
Physics Lecture Theatre 1
Sandy Bay Campus, University
of Tasmania
ABSTRACT: The biologists have done it again. Just when scientists were beginning to redeem their image by reinventing themselves as green, delivering the planet from the poisons developed by the chemists, biologists have let the F word out of the cupboard again. According to the media, Victor Frankenstein is alive and well, delivering G.E. vegetables, cloning sheep, cows, human babies and anything you care to nominate.
Why is the Frankenstein story the most powerful myth of our time? To understand this we need to look at the representations of scientists in Western literature, art and film from the medieval alchemist to the present.
SPEAKER PROFILE: Roslynn Haynes, Associate Professor of English at the University of New South Wales, has made a study of these images in literature, art and film. In this illustrated talk she will trace the history of images of the scientist and consider the impact these have had on Western society - and why it matters.
She is the author of From Faust to Strangelove: Representations of the Scientist in Western
Literature. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).
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