DECEMBER
10 Children inherit much more from their parents than their genes. In a most extreme example, Monika Hertwig grew up with the burden of knowing her father had been the murderous Nazi captain Amon Göth. Göth, whose brutality was chillingly portrayed by Ralph Fiennes in Schindler’s List, tortured and killed thousands of Jews in his year and a half as commandant of the Plaszow concentration camp in Poland. In the new documentary Inheritance, filmmaker James Moll explores our need to come to terms with the sins of our fathers, as he follows Hertwig on a journey to meet one of Göth’s surviving victims.
PBS, 9 p.m. EST
www.pbs.org/pov/pov2008/inheritance
Ongoing
What makes humans so unique? Find out in the permanent exhibit Who Am I? at the Science Museum in London. Interactive exhibits demonstrate our species’ ancient genetic roots, our immediate family’s ancestry and our individual minds. Don’t miss the related exhibition Psychology: Mind Your Head, a permanent collection of tools such as specialized building-block toys that psychologists have used to unravel the mysteries of the mind. Created in 2001 to celebrate the centennial of the British Psychological Society, the exhibit highlights decades of important scientific contributions from psychologists in the U.K.
London
www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/galleries
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JANUARY
5Florence Halpern, considered the “grandmother of psychology,” was born on this day in 1900. As president of the Society of Clinical Psychology, she helped to pioneer the Rorschach inkblot test used to evaluate personality and emotional function. Although its use has at times been controversial, the Rorschach test remains the second most widely employed assessment in forensic psychology today.
8 Language can reveal much about the organization of the human mind. Harvard University psychologist and best-selling author Steven Pinker will address language and cognition in a public lecture at the SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Santa Barbara, Calif.
www.sagecenter.ucsb.edu/lecture.htm
20–22 Many people have no exposure to neuroscience before college—let alone high school. In an effort to change that, Newcastle University researchers are hosting a series of free lectures called My Brain and I, open to the public and geared toward 10- to 14-year-olds. Exploring aspects of consciousness and personality, as well as technologies used to mend brain injuries, the lecturers will engage kids with hands-on demonstrations and experiments to help these heady concepts come to life.
Newcastle, England
www.ncl.ac.uk/events/noticeboard
Note: This article was originally published with the title, "Calendar".