I have long been troubled by Henri Bergson鈥檚 notion that all of us have only one idea. In spite of our best efforts to constantly do new work, we keep returning to this one idea. For academics, Bergson鈥檚 is a depressing proposition because a career marked by repetition is, surely, a career lacking in originality. And who would want that?
"The Sound of Mucus"My wife had died a horrible and lingering death when my daughters were 14 and 10. Devastated the three of us sought solace, and to begin to recoup our lives we reinstated a group activity the three of us had enjoyed when they were considerably younger. We watched movies. Indeed, we would watch the same films over and over.
The object of my reflection is a book: There are probably a lot of books among the 鈥渢ransformative works鈥 you find here, but this book, known as the 鈥淢ynas Codex,鈥 is a very different kind of object from most of them. When I say 鈥渂ook,鈥 you probably think of a text that can be read in many different places at once, each reader experiencing a more or less identical object, like this one:
Jennifer Hanley '06 just began a new position at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, shifting her attention from Mars to Pluto and a moon of Saturn, but she's still focused on one goal 鈥 the search for water.Hanley was one of eight authors of a paper, published in the Sept. 28, 2015 issue of Nature Geoscience, on the discovery that liquid water appears to exist on Mars.
If you happen to watch Nicolas Cage's new movie "The Runner" and stay for the credits, you'll see the name Andrea Fiorentini '16.Working on the film's postproduction has been just one of the benefits of Fiorentini's internship the past two summers through the alumni-run Cornell in Hollywood program, which helps Cornell students learn about careers in the entertainment industry, find internships and network with Cornellians.
The course of Carol Rattray's '78 career has veered from finance to philanthropy to entrepreneurship, so she's a popular person when she volunteers her time for the Arts and 麻豆视频 Career Services office.
Jandy Nelson聽'87 decided at a very young age that she wanted to be a poet. "I was probably about 13," she says. "I don't聽know where it came from -- I still don't. My parents always thought I would grow out of it, and I didn't."
If you hear Tim Novikoff, Ph.D. '13, speak and you're of a certain age, you might recognize him as the voice of Jeffy from MTV's "Daria" animated series from the mid-1990s.But if you look at his LinkedIn profile, you'll see that his career has followed a path that marries his love of the technical world with the joy he finds in being creative.
Although Katrine Bosley '90 doesn't get a lot of time to talk to patients as CEO of Editas Medicine, she relishes the opportunity."You only have to talk to one patient with one disease that you're working on to know why you go to work every day," says Bosley, whose company is working to translate genome editing technology into new drugs and treatments for poorly treated diseases and patients.
