ELCA's Gustavus Adolphus to host Nobel Conference Oct. 7-8

by Frank Imhoff, ELCA News Service

Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, Minn., will host
the 44th Nobel Conference, "Who Were the First Humans?"
Oct. 7-8. "We will consider the full range of recent
evidence about the first modern humans and what we may
stand to learn from them about surviving the global
challenges we face as a species today," said Timothy
Robinson, director, Nobel Conference, in an online
invitation. Gustavus Adolphus is one of 28 colleges
and universities of the Evangelical Lutheran Church
in America.

Scheduled speakers include:
+ Robin Dunbar, evolutionary anthropologist and
director, Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary
Anthropology, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
+ Marcus Feldman, mathematical biologist and director,
Morrison Institute for Population and Resource Studies,
Stanford University, Calif.
+ J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, theologian and professor
of theology and science, Princeton Theological Seminary,
N.J.
+ Curtis Marean, paleoanthropologist and professor,
Institute of Human Origins, School of Human Evolution
and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe
+ Svante Pääbo, leading authority on paleogenetics and
director, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
+ Dennis Stanford, archaeologist and division head,
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, D.C.

The college expects about 6,000 people to attend the
conference, which "links a general audience, including
high school students and teachers, with the world's foremost
scholars and researchers in discussion centered on
contemporary issues relating to the natural and social
sciences," according to a Gustavus Adolphus news release.
It is "the first ongoing education conference in the United
States to have the official authorization of The Nobel
Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden."