QED: A Reading

Alan Alda, a seven-time Emmy® Award winner, played Hawkeye Pierce and wrote many of the episodes on the classic TV series M*A*S*H. He has starred in, written, and directed many films, and was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in The Aviator.

Mia Barron is a theater, film and television actress. Her stage credits include Springtime for Henry and Heartbreak House, She Stoops to Comedy and Hedda Gabler. She appeared in 27 Dresses with Katherine Heigl and also has a recurring role as the voice of Molotov in the cartoon network’s The Venture Brothers.

Gordon Davidson is a Tony Award-winning theater director. He was artistic director of the renowned Center Theater Group in Los Angeles for more than thirty years. His credits include Broadway productions of Children of a Lesser God and The Shadow Box.

Vera C. Rubin is an observational astronomer who has studied the motions of gas and stars in galaxies and motions of galaxies in the universe for 75 percent of her life. Her work was influential in discovering that most of the matter in the universe is dark — it does not emit or absorb any light, and it does not interact with ordinary matter (which is made of atoms) except via gravity.

Physicist Pierre C. Hohenberg is interested in questions about the structure of matter under extreme conditions. A recipient of the Max Planck Medal of the German Physical Society and the Lars Onsager Prize of the American Physical Society, Hohenberg is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and is Senior Vice Provost for Research at NYU.

Theoretical physicist Stephon Alexander explores unresolved questions about the early universe. Also an accomplished jazz musician, Alexander has collaborated with Grammy Award-winning musician Will Calhoun.