New Jersey: Innovation State; Celebrating 350 Years of New Jersey History

Paul Israel, director and editor of the Thomas Edison Papers at Rutgers University, will trace the history of New Jersey, as the Innovation State. Beginning with scientific thinkers such as Thomas Edison, Dr. Israel will trace the state’s history of inventors and why so many thrived here. The 50 minute talk and Q and A will also include two Highland Park Nobel Prize winners, Arno Allan Penzias of Bell Labs and Selman Abraham Waksman of Rutgers University. Penzias, a physicist and radio astronomer, discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation that helped establish the Big Bang Theory. Waksman and members of his laboratory isolated Streptomycin and then discovered several life saving antibiotics at Rutgers University. Dr. Israel will also explore why institutions such as Bell Labs and Rutgers University provided such perfect fertile ground for scientific innovation in New Jersey.