Festival Aims To Change New Yorkers' Perception of Science

The physicist Brian Greene sees science everywhere he looks, and for five days next week he will seek to share that vision with New Yorkers, as the city plays host to the inaugural World Science Festival.

The festival, which runs May 28-June 1, will feature dozens of programs ranging from science-inspired dance performances and storytelling events to a street fair in Washington Square Park on May 31. It also includes lectures by Nobel Prize winners and a robotics exhibit for children. Drawing heavily on the arts, the festival attempts to present science to the public in an engaging and accessible way, Mr. Greene, a co-founder, said.

"The heart and soul of this is to really bring science to the general audience," he said. "One of the things we want to do with the festival is change people's perception of science, to really show that science is something we deal with in every moment of our lives."

Mr. Greene, a physicist at Columbia University, said he came up with the idea for the event when he traveled to Italy several years ago for a smaller-scale festival. He recalled thinking, "Wouldn't this be great in New York City?" Back in New York, the idea resonated with city officials, as well as the more than a dozen academic and cultural institutions that signed on to host the festival, in addition to Credit Suisse, the festival's principal sponsor.

"New York is known as a finance capital, a culture capital, and a theater capital, but it's not known as a science capital and yet the depth of science here is really substantial," Mr. Greene said.

Next week's programs have been shaped in large part by his wife, Tracy Day, an Emmy Award-winning producer who is a festival co-founder. "One of the things we really wanted to do here was open up new avenues to get into science," she said, outlining some of the events that blend science with music, acting, and dance. "You go for the art, you leave with the science," she said.

One example, according to Ms. Day, is a multimedia show by Mr. Greene, Nobel Laureate William Phillips, and the actor Alan Alda, who will host a program on quantum mechanics. The show will incorporate a performance by dancers whose movements are decided by the rolling of dice.

Reached by telephone, Mr. Alda said "art humanizes" the science. "Meeting the people where they are is the most important thing," he said.

During the festival, Mr. Alda will also read from the play "QED," in which he once starred as the physicist Richard Feynman. On June 1, Mr. Alda also plans to perform a new play he wrote called "Dear Albert," based on the letters of Albert Einstein.

Another program blends science and storytelling. The performance, on May 29, will feature individuals such as the playwright and actor Sam Shepard, the journalist Lucy Hawking, and others who will tell true stories about experiments gone wrong.

Ms. Hawking, the daughter of the physicist Stephen Hawking, also will take part in an "Author's Corner" at the street fair in Washington Square Park, where she will discuss her father's work as well as the children's book she co-wrote with him, "George's Secret Key to the Universe."

"I take the kids on a great, big cosmic journey," Ms. Hawking, who lives in Cambridge, England, said. "We talk about things like how big is the universe. We talk about numbers, we talk about gravity."

For Mr. Greene, understanding science is a key to addressing issues such as climate change, space exploration, and stem cell research. "If you don't have a general public willing to engage with the underlying science, how can we as a society make informed decisions?" he said.