This fall, the Cornell community has the chance to hear from three Nobel Laureates in one semester, two of whom are alumni: Claudia Goldin ’67, Jack Szostak, Ph.D. ’77, and Richard Thaler.
Adam T. Smith/Provided
Open through Dec. 31, 'Sacred Ground' highlights findings from a four-year archaeological excavation of Ithaca’s St. James A.M.E. Zion Church conducted by Cornell faculty, students and Ithaca school children from 2021–2024.
Open now through Dec. 31, the exhibit highlights findings from a four-year archaeological excavation of Ithaca’s St. James A.M.E. Zion Church conducted by Cornell faculty, students and Ithaca school children from 2021–2024.
binaya_photography on Unsplash
Patan Durbar Square, Lalitpur, Nepal
Kathryn March, professor emerita of anthropology, comments on the violent protests in Nepal.
LIGO/Caltech/MIT/Sonoma State (Aurore Simonnet)
An artist's conception of a precessing binary black hole. The black holes, which will ultimately spiral together into one larger black hole, are shown here orbiting one another in a plane. The black holes are spinning in a non-aligned fashion, which means they are tilted relative to the overall orbital motion of the pair. This causes the orbit to precess like a top spinning along a tilted axis.
The LIGO-VIRGO-KAGRA team has announced a black hole merger similar to its first detection; a decade’s worth of technological advances allow unprecedented tests of General Relativity to be performed.
In “Rural Versus Urban: The Growing Divide that Threatens Democracy,” Cornell government scholars Suzanne Mettler and Trevor Brown share findings from their study of data spanning five decades and all 3,143 U.S. counties plus interviews with people in several states.
Jason Koski/Cornell University
Song Lin, associate professor of chemistry
Recognized for advancing electrochemical techniques that enable efficient, sustainable synthesis of complex organic molecules, accelerating drug development, and materials innovation, Lin is a finalist in Chemical Sciences.
Cornell researchers have uncovered the "three-tailed" fat molecule's surprising role in cellular survival: protecting against damage when oxygen runs out.
Photo by Mufid Majnun on Unsplash
Flag of Indonesia
Professor Tom Pepinsky comments on the news that Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto has reshuffled his cabinet, removing top economic and security officials.
Elisha Cohn's second book, “Milieu: A Creaturely Theory of the Contemporary Novel,” also explores the methods authors are using to give animals a voice.
Touch Of Light/CC BY-SA 4.0
The Pentagon, the Headquarters of the US Department of Defense
“The proposal to rename the Department of Defense back to the Department of War carries symbolic weight but raises questions about substance," says Sarah Kreps, government scholar and former active-duty officer in the U.S. Air Force.
“What is happening to the kidneys of sugarcane workers is not a result of climate change. It is climate change": Anthropologist Alex Nading documents how environmental justice activists are addressing the epidemic.
Martin F. Hatch Jr., Ph.D. ’80, professor of music emeritus in the College of Arts and Sciences, died Aug. 23 in Ithaca, New York. He was 83.
NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Olmsted (STScI)
Provided The Earth-size exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 e, depicted at the lower right, is silhouetted as it passes in front of its flaring host star in this artist’s concept of the TRAPPIST-1 system.
TRAPPIST-1 e may have an atmosphere that could support having liquid water on the planet’s surface in the form of a global ocean or icy surface, according to new research.
Cornell Athletics
Ken Dryden ’69 was one of the greatest goalies in NHL history.
Ken Dryden ’69, the legendary Cornell men’s hockey goaltender who still holds the program record for career wins (76) and backstopped the Big Red to its first national championship in 1967, died of cancer Sept. 5.
Amanda Hatcher
A crowd of students listens to alum Dan Cane '98 talk about the companies he's founded during an entrepreneurship kickoff event Sept. 4.
Niko Tsavekou ’27, an economics major in the College of Arts & Sciences, won the pitch contest for Katha, a creatine-enhanced coconut water recovery drink he created with two friends.
Naia Andrade/Provided
Ethan Duvall, an inaugural Semlitz Family Sustainability Fellow, co-founded a nonprofit in the Ecuadorian Amazon to strengthen green economic opportunities.
Ethan Duvall, an inaugural Semlitz Family Sustainability Fellow, has launched a nonprofit aimed at protecting biodiversity and culture in the Amazon Rainforest.
A leading force in Quebec’s progressive francophone folk movement, Le Vent du Nord will perform in the first Dallas Morse Coors Concert Series (DMCCS) on Sept. 20 at 7:30 p.m. in Bailey Hall.
President of Russia//Creative Commons license 4.0
General Secretary Xi Jinping of the Chinese Communist Party and world leaders attending the 2025 China Victory Day Parade in Beijing.
Jean Frantz Blackall, a Cornell faculty member from 1958-94 who in 1971 became the first woman to receive tenure in what was then the Department of English, in the College of Arts and Sciences, died July 15 in Williamsburg, Virginia. She was 97.
A four-day event featuring films, panels, workshops, the unveiling of a mural and other activities will celebrate the 70th anniversary of her degree, life and work. “Toni Morrison: Literature and Public Life” will take place Sept. 18-21.
Best-selling writer and technology blogger Cory Doctorow will make the A.D. White Professor-at-Large program’s second dual-campus visit, ending his week at Cornell Tech in New York City. Four other professors will visit Cornell this fall.
Copyright Julia Galdo and Cody Cloud (JUCO), www.jucophoto.com/Creative Commons Attribution
Cory Doctorow
Science fiction author, activist and journalist Cory Doctorow will visit Cornell Sept. 11-19 as an A.D. White Professor at Large, taking part in several events on campus and in the community..
A Cornell-led collaboration developed microscale magnetic particles that can mimic the ability of biomolecules to self-assemble into complex structures, while also reducing the parasitic waste that would otherwise clog up production.
Photography, drawing, maps, calligraphy, installations and audio recordings depict a trip by three scholar-artists in honor of Odysseus’ epic voyage, but in North America.
Maimonides, one of the most significant intellectual figures of the medieval period,worked as a physician, thought like a scientist, and served as a leader of the Jewish community in Cairo.
Jason Koski/Cornell University
The University acquired a collection of mollusk fossils in the 1800s.
A Cornell-led collaboration devised a potentially low-cost method for producing antibodies for therapeutic treatments: bioengineered bacteria with an overlooked enzyme that can help monoclonal antibodies boost their immune defenses.
Wiesner Group/Provided
A copolymer-inorganic nanoparticle ink is deposited during the 3D printing process, where it self-assembles before being heat-treated into a crystalline superconductor.
Nearly a decade after they first demonstrated that soft materials could guide the formation of superconductors, Cornell researchers have achieved a one-step, 3D printing method that produces superconductors with record properties.
Proactive outreach and Cornell’s tradition of supporting military service have helped grow the number of cadets and midshipmen joining the Tri-Service Brigade this year.
The celebration also features a welcome speech at 12:15 p.m. by Elaine L. Westbrooks, Carl A. Kroch University Librarian, and open houses for the new Anthropology Collaboratory and Library Map Collection.
Grant Farred, a professor in the Africana Studies and Research Center, chronicles his love for both a distant and a local sports team in “A Sports Odyssey: My Ithaca Journal,” published July 25 by Temple University Press.
Ryan Young/Cornell University
Lisa Kaltenegger, director of the Carl Sagan Institute, in the Space Sciences Building.
This month’s featured titles include the latest from a top mystery writer, a Marvel omnibus, and a look at challenges to democracy – many by A&S faculty and alumni.
Song Lin and collaborators use electrochemistry to selectively synthesize chiral compounds – important in pharmaceuticals.
Jason Koski/Cornell University
Margaret Rossiter, the Marie Underhill Noll Emerita Professor of the History of Science in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Margaret Rossiter, the Marie Underhill Noll Emerita Professor of the History of Science in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) and known worldwide for her studies of the history of women in science, died Aug. 3. She was 81.
Cornell chemistry researchers have designed a light-powered, reusable catalyst that’s pre-charged by electricity and capable of driving challenging reactions, with applications including drug development and environmental clean-up.
Rare and Manuscript Collections
George Moler 1875 (at far right) and other faculty with the dynamo during Sibley College’s 60th anniversary in 1931.
A book from Adam Szetela Ph.D. ’25 explores a new version of self-censorship in the publishing world.
Provided
Members of the project team that gathered at Astera Institute on June 24, 2025. Nozomi Ando is front row, second from the right; Stephen Meisburger is back row, third from the left.
A new $5 million initiative, funded by the Astera Institute with experimental work conducted at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source, aims to make diffuse scattering accessible to the public and the broader scientific community.
Jason Koski/Cornell University
Michael Fontaine, professor of classics in the College of Arts and Sciences, edited and translated “How to Have Willpower: An Ancient Guide to Not Giving In.”
“How to Have Willpower: An Ancient Guide to Not Giving In,” edited and translated by professor Michael Fontaine, brings together a pair of works by Plutarch and Prudentius that show how people can overcome pressures that encourage them to act against their own best interests.
Antonio Fernandez-Ruiz, assistant professor and Nancy and Peter Meinig Family Investigator in the Life Sciences in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded a biomedical sciences grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Innovative and far-reaching discoveries such as better electric batteries, carbon capture technologies, renewable plastics and improvements in solar cells are just a few of their research areas.
The David M. Einhorn Center for Community Engagement awarded nine grants to a diverse array of projects that connect classroom learning with hands-on collaboration.
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A sun dog and 22 degree halo appearing over Winnipeg, Canada. Sun dogs and other visual effects occur when icy crystals in Earth’s atmosphere align in certain ways; Cornell astronomers predict that similar effects can appear when starlight interacts with quartz crystals in exoplanet atmospheres.
The newest episode of a podcast hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell, Startup Cornell, features Meredith Oppenheim ‘95, founder of Vitality Society and now a strategic advisor in the senior housing space.
A new book by Carmel Raz focuses on the work of John Holden, an 18th-century potter who also wrote an influential treatise on musical theory.
Provided
Historic instruments from the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards will take center stage during public concerts, lectures, roundtables and more during Forte | Piano 2025: Crafting Soundscapes.
Musicians, scholars and instrument makers will gather at Cornell Aug. 5-10 for Forte | Piano 2025: Crafting Soundscapes, a conference and festival exploring dimensions of historical keyboard practice from performance and scholarship to instrument making and listening.
Sean Coon/Creative Commons license 2.0
Malcolm-Jamal Warner at National Black Theater Festival in 2007
Professor Samantha Sheppard: “Warner’s legacy is both rooted in his foundational and very funny role within a groundbreaking moment in television history and his commitment to moving beyond the character and show that turned him into a beloved household name."
Political satire—long a staple of late-night TV—plays a critical role in democracy, cutting through partisanship and exposing hypocrisies that traditional news often can’t, says philosophy professor David Shoemaker.
A&S government alum Kevin Gibson '10 writes in a Chime In column that he was burned out from a career in law when trips to India and Sweden put him on the path to healing.
Provided
Gina Fu ’28, a statistics and economics major in the College of Arts and Sciences and vice president of the Cornell Table Tennis Club, competes at the College Table Tennis National Championships in April.