Dorcas Cummings Memorial Lecture
Past Lectures

A special community lecture associated with the CSHL Symposium was established in 1978. It was named in honor of Dorcas Cummings, an enthusiastic member of the Long Island Biological Association for over 20 years. Cummings’ untimely death in 1976 inspired generous donations to the Laboratory in her memory from her family and friends.


2016 Charles L. Sawyers, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center        
Reflections on Precision Medicine and Cancer Moonshots
2015 Svante Paabo,Max-Planck-Institute The Genetic Legacy of Neanderthals
2014 Patricia Churchland,UCSD/Salk Institute The Brains Behind Morality
2013 Hidde Ploegh,MIT/Whitehead Institute The Logic of your Immune System
2012 Robert Martienssen, CSHL Send in the Clones
2011 Cynthia Kenyon, UCSF The Deadly Sweet Tooth
2010 Robert Goldman, Northwestern University The Unexpected Link Between Premature Aging and Nuclear Organization
2009 Kevin Padian, UC Berkeley Darwin, Dover, and Intelligent Design
2008 Elaine Fuchs, The Rockefeller University Skin Stem Cells
2007 Charles A. Czeisler, Harvard Medical School Work Hours, Sleep and Safety: Physician, Heal Thyself
2006 Ron Pasterk, Hubrecht Laboratory The Emerging World of Small RNAs
2005 Charles Sawyers, UCLA Making Progress through Molecular Attacks on Cancer
2004 David Haig, Harvard University The Divided Self-Brains, Brawns, and the Superego
2003 Francis Collins, National Institutes of Health The Human Genome Project
2002 Richard Lifton, Yale University Salt & Blood Pressure: New Insights from Human Genetics Studies
2001 Venki Ramakrishnan, Medical Research Council Protein Factories and Antibiotics
2000 Jan H.J. Noeijmakers, Erasmus University Maintaining Nature's Perfection: Cancer and Aging and the Condition of Our Genes
1999 Irving L. Weissman, Stanford University Repairing the Body: The Promise of Blood and Tissue Stem Cells
1998 Ronald Evans, The Salk Institute The Molecular Biology of Fat: Weighing the Risks
1997 Sean Carroll, University of Wisconsin Embryos and Ancestors: The Formation and Evolution of Animal Body Patterns
1996 V. S. Ramachandran, UCSD Neurology: What they Reveal about Human Nature
1995 Gunther Blobel, The Rockefeller University How Proteins Find their Addresses in the Cell
1994 Harold Varmus, National Institutes of Health Why is it Important to Understand the Genetic Basis of Cancer
1993 Eric S. Lander, MIT Center for Genome Res Mapping Genes and Genomes
1992 Michael Brown, Southwestern Medical School Cholesterol
1991 J. Michael Bishop, UCSF Medical School Misguided Cells: The Genesis of Human Cancer
1990 Francis Crick, The Salk Institute How Do We See Things
1989 Gustva Nossal, Eliza Hall Institute/Australia Basic Elements of Immunology
1988 Eric Kandel, Columbia Presbyterian Hospital The Long and Short of Long-term Memory
1987 Ernst Mayr, Harvard University What is Evolution All About
1986 Robert Gallo, National Institutes of Health AIDS
1985 S. Dillon Ripley II, Smithsonian Institution Environmental Degradation in the Tropics
1984 Ian Sussex, Yale University The New Plant Genetics and Its Implications for Biotechnology
1983 Amory & Hunter Lovins, Rocky Mountain Inst. Study of Sources and Proper Use and Observation of Energy Solutions for Energy Problems
1982 Robert D. Ballard, Woods Hole Explorations on the Ocean's Floors
1981 Walter Sullivan, New York Times We Are Not Alone
1980 Stephen Jay Gould, Harvard University The Meaning of the Darwin Revolution
1979 Rene Dubos, The Rockefeller University Man's Needs to Create a Symbiotic Relationship With Earth To Survive
1978 John Kopper, C.W. Post University Human Evolution and Geomagnetism