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Blog: Science and the Study of the Classics

January 30, 2017

I was surprised to receive an invitation to write this blog; it was based on some passing remarks that I made last year at a meeting in Dublin on BioPharma on the valuable role that the Greek and Roman classics played in my education. I am, by way of background, a physician and a scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, where I chair a basic science department and direct an institute devoted to translation of basic discoveries into novel therapeutics and diagnostics.

I was born in Ireland, where I studied medicine at a time when a passing grade in Latin in the final high school exam was a requirement to progress to university. That is no more. Unlike the UK today, where students are streamed towards science or the arts early in their high school careers in preparation for a three-subject final exam, we competed for entry into any university course Read more …