MIT geology professor John Grotzinger is the speaker and cellist Mark Summer and pianist Alan Yavnai are the performers for the Annual Gordon Tomkins Lecture and Concert on Friday, Feb. 11, 3 to 5 p.m., in the Genentech Hall Building Auditorium at the UCSF Mission Bay campus.
The event, sponsored by the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, is open to the public and will be followed by a reception. The concert and lecture will be broadcast on closed circuit television to
Rock Hall, Room 106. at Mission Bay, and by satellite to Room N 225 in the School of Nursing Building on the Parnassus campus.
John Grotzinger, a member of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT, is most recently known for his role as sedimentologist on the Mars mission at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His talk, "Sedimentary Rocks and Evidence for Aqueous Environment on the Surface of Mars," will be preceded by the musical portion of the program by Summer and Yavnai, who will perform works by Brahms and others, including their own.
The event is named in honor of Gordon Tomkins, a visionary professor of biochemistry. Tomkins came to UCSF from the NIH in 1969 and died unexpectedly in 1975. He inspired scores of scientists and students, including several who now are senior UCSF faculty members.
Tomkins was an accomplished classical and jazz clarinetist and saxophonist, and is fittingly remembered each year with a concert in addition to a lecture.
