New plant science center to tackle global hunger

Washington University and four other institutions have joined in an innovative partnership to develop a cutting-edge plant science center in St. Louis whose mission will be to lead the world in finding solutions to global hunger, disease and environmental degradation.

"As we stand on the brink of a new millennium," former President Jimmy Carter said at a July 31 ceremony announcing plans for the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, "there is no greater challenge ahead than to feed the world's population and to ensure the health of our children and to accomplish that without further degradation of the earth that sustains us."

The center envisions the Midwest's agricultural heartland as a "bio belt," the Silicon Valley of emerging agriculture technologies needed to feed the world's growing population. Within a 500-mile radius of St. Louis lies the world's most fertile cropland, accounting for 75 percent of American farm production.

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Art Museum's Burke named Desmond Lee Scholar here

Citing a desire to strengthen intellectual ties among St. Louis cultural institutions, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton and Sam Fox, president of The Saint Louis Art Museum Board of Commissioners, announced July 20 that James D. Burke, Ph.D., will become the E. Desmond Lee Scholar in Residence and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Art History and Archaeology in Arts and Sciences at Washington University. Burke is currently director of the art museum.

Burke will assume the appointment at the end of his term as museum director. He will become the museum's director emeritus once the current search for his successor is complete.

The appointment recognizes Burke's continuing commitment to the arts and honors E. Desmond Lee, who has contributed generously to both the museum and the University.

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Luce Professorship: crossing disciplines to study collective memory

Who "controls" history -- and what are the implications when it's Disney or Oliver Stone? What should be remembered and why and how should we remember it? Where does journalism end and public relations begin?

These questions are just the opening volleys in a conversation that soon will envelop the far reaches of campus, from psychology to history to anthropology to architecture to philosophy to cultural studies to English to education to neuroscience.

The dialogue will be sparked by the incoming Henry R. Luce Professor in Collective and Individual Memory.

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Rare legal commentaries given to law school

The rare set of four books came to the school from Cynthia Love Roth, a member of the Eliot Society and the widow of Benjamin Roth, who was a St. Louis lawyer and a friend and supporter of the law school.

The volumes, which date back to 1771-72, are a reprint of the fourth Oxford edition. Originally published in England in 1769, Blackstone's Commentaries then were published in the United States by Robert Bell in Philadelphia.

"The volumes are a tremendous addition to our rare books collection both historically and for what they mean to the field of law," said Philip Berwick, J.D., associate dean for information resources at the law school. "Blackstone was one of five jurists considered the authority on English common law -- the law established through the courts, as opposed to statutory law. Colonial law in America drew from the English common law and was affected directly by these commentaries."

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