Dr. Denis Alexander will present “Are We Slaves to Our Genes? A Scientific and Christian Perspective” as the 2017 Faith and Science Lecture at Hope College on Tuesday, April 4, at 7 p.m. in the Maas Center auditorium.
The public is invited. Admission is free.
Alexander is the emeritus director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion of St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge, where he is a Fellow. He was previously chairman of the Molecular Immunology Programme and head of the Laboratory of Lymphocyte Signalling and Development at The Babraham Institute, Cambridge.
Prior to that, Alexander was at the Imperial Cancer Research Laboratories in London (now Cancer Research UK), and spent 15 years developing university departments and laboratories overseas, including as associate professor of biochemistry in the Medical Faculty of the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, where he helped to establish the National Unit of Human Genetics. He was initially an Open Scholar at Oxford reading Biochemistry, before obtaining a Ph.D. in neurochemistry at the Institute of Psychiatry in London.
Alexander writes, lectures and broadcasts widely in the field of science and religion. He was editor of the journal Science & Christian Belief from 1992 to 2013, and he currently serves as a member of the executive committee of the International Society for Science and Religion. In 2012, he delivered the prestigious Gifford Lectures at the University of St. Andrews, titled “Genes, Determinism and God.”
The lecture is sponsored by the college’s departments of chemistry, geological and environmental science, nursing, philosophy, physics and religion; neuroscience and Senior Seminar programs; Campus Ministries; Office of Teaching and Learning; and deans for natural and applied sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities.
The Maas Center is located at 264 Columbia Ave., between 10th and 13th streets.