The Stanford Emeriti/ae Council presents a lecture by Lubert Stryer, the Winzer Professor of Cell Biology, Emeritus, entitled Light and Life.  Attendance is limited to emeriti/ae faculty and staff along with their spouses or significant others. This is the 41st lecture in the Council’s series of David B. Abernethy Emeriti/ae Lectures: Autobiographical Reflections. These stimulating talks are later made available to the broader community on the Council’s podcast at https://stanford.io/emeritipodcast and feature distinguished senior faculty members speaking about their lives, careers, and inspirations. Speakers reflect a wide range of teaching and research fields at Stanford, including the arts, humanities, social sciences, education, business, law, engineering, sciences, and medicine.

Dr. Stryer, a recipient of the National Medal of Science, advises that the interplay of light and life has fascinated him since his college years. He will speak about how light can be used to probe the structure and dynamics of the molecules of life, and how light triggers a highly amplified signal in retinal photoreceptors to initiate vision. He notes that he has been captivated by visual imagery and particularly by color, both in the natural world and in art, and that he used a highly visual approach in conveying fundamental concepts and illustrating chemical transformations in his textbook of biochemistry.