Lester Brown, president of the Worldwatch Institute, will discuss "Facing the Challenge of Food Scarcity" at the seventh annual J. Herbert Hollomon Memorial Symposium sponsored by the Technology and Culture Forum on Thursday, April 10 at 4pm in Rm 9-150.
The session will be moderated by Professor Nazli Choucri of the Department of Political Science. Respondents will be Richard Levins, an agro-ecologist at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Richard Goldman of the Harvard Institute for International Development.
Mr. Brown, an agriculture expert, served as advisor to Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman starting in 1964 and later as administrator in that department. He later helped establish the Overseas Development Council and in 1974, he founded the Worldwatch Institute, a nonprofit research institute devoted to the analysis of global environmental issues. The organization's publications include Vital Signs and the widely read State of the World reports. Mr. Brown has also authored several books including Who Will Feed China? and Tough Choices: Facing the Challenge of Food Scarcity.
Dr. Hollomon, who held leadership positions in academe, industry and the federal government, received the SB in physics (1940) and the ScD in metallurgy (1946). After serving as president of the University of Oklahoma (1968-70) and assistant secretary of commerce for science and technology (1962-67), he returned to MIT and founded the Center for Policy Alternatives, which identified major sociotechnical issues and the policies and practices surrounding them. In 1985, the center became part of the Center for Technology, Policy and Industrial Development. Dr. Hollomon died in 1985 at the age of 66.
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A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on April 9, 1997.
