Public Understanding of Science and Technology

Doron Weber, Program Director

The goal of this program is to enhance people's lives by providing a better understanding of the increasingly scientific and technological environment in which we live. The program also aims to convey some of the challenges and rewards of the scientific and technological enterprise and of the lives of the men and women who undertake it. The Program supports the use of books, radio, public television, commercial television and film, theater, the internet and new media to reach a wide non-specialist audience.

Books

In 2006, Norton published a second edition of its popular and critically acclaimed history textbook, Inventing America: A History of the United States. This seminal work, initiated and funded by the Foundation and coauthored by Professors Pauline Maier, Merritt Roe Smith, Alexander Keyssar and Daniel J. Kevles, provides the most multifaceted view of American history to date, integrating science and technology, as well as business, into the central narrative of the nation's history. The first edition was adopted by over 250 colleges and universities.

The Foundation supports selected books designed to inform people about the scientific basis of issues that are often confusing or controversial. In 2006, Stephen Hall published Size Matters: How Height Affects the Health, Happiness and Success of Boys—and the Men They Become (Houghton Mifflin), about the biology and psychology of height; Kathy Sawyer published a book on the origins of a controversial discovery, The Rock From Mars: A Detective Story on Two Planets (Random House); and Max Boot published a sweeping look at the role of technology in war, War Made New: Technology, Warfare and the Course of History (Gotham). All three books were supported by officer grants.

Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Viking), recipient of an earlier officer grant, stayed on the paperback bestseller list through 2006. Katherine Eban’s 2005 book, Dangerous Doses: How Counterfeiters Are Contaminating America’s Drug Supply (Harcourt), a hard-hitting analysis about adulterated medicine that the author’s investigative reporting first helped to expose, was optioned as a motion picture by HBO and Picturehouse.

2004 books in this category include His Brother's Keeper: Tales from the Edge of Medicine, Jonathan Wiener's celebrated narrative about two brothers and the efforts of regenerative medicine to cure ALS.; James Shreeve's The Genome War: How Craig Venter Tried to Capture the Code of Life and Save the World (Knopf), an inside account of the Human Genome Project and one of its key figures.; and A Clone of Your Own?: The Science and Ethics of Cloning (Oxford) by Arlene Judith Klotzko.

Previously, Stephen Hall wrote Merchants of Immortality: Chasing the Dream of Human Life Extension, a new look at the science and claims of aging research; and, Richard Preston published The Demon in the Freezer, a bestseller about the first major bioterror event in the U.S. and the government's ongoing efforts to protect against smallpox and other potential bioweapons. Demon was Preston's first nonfiction book since the The Hot Zone, also supported by the Foundation.

In 2002, Inge and Martin Goldstein published How Much Risk: A Guide to Understanding Environmental Health Hazards. The Foundation also supported Jeff Wheelwright's The Irritable Heart: The Medical Mystery of the Gulf War; Jon Cohen's Shots in the Dark: The Wayward Search for an AIDS Vaccine; Robert Pool's Fat: Fighting the Obesity Epidemic; Richard Rhodes’s Deadly Feasts: Tracking the Secrets of a Terrifying New Plague and Robert J. Maccoun and Peter Reuter's Drug War Heresies: Learning from Other Vices, Times, and Places.

In  2006, a new grant went to Carl Zimmer for a biography of E. Coli. Work also continued on a book about the neurology of aging by Oliver Sacks and on Richard Rhodes's culminating study about the nuclear era, a trilogy that began with The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, both supported by the Foundation.

The Foundation also supports books that profile scientific figures from varying angles, most recently Nobelist Eric Kandel’s critically acclaimed memoir about his voyage from Vienna to America and from psychoanalysis to molecular biology, In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind (Norton).  In 2006, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin won the Pulitzer Prize for their full-scale biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppemheimer (Knopf) originally supported by a Sloan grant. 

In 2005, M.G. Lord published Astro Turf: The Private Life of Rocket Science,(Walker) a memoir of her father and his years as an aerospace engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Oxford University Press published The World of Andrei Sakharov: A Russian Physicists’s Path to Freedom, whose English translation by Antonina Bouis received Foundation support.

Previously, Sir Harold Evans published his impressive compendium of two centuries of American innovation, They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine (Little Brown), named one of the ten best business books in 2004. Victor McElheny published an intellectual biography of James Watson, Watson and DNA: Making a Scientific Revolution (Basic) and Lillian Hoddeson and Vicki Daitch co-authored True Genius: The Life and Science of John Bardeen (Joseph Henry Press).

Other efforts in this category include The Monk in the Garden by Robin Marantz Henig; Henri Petroski’s Paper Boy; BettyAnn Kevles’s Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space; Steve Lohr's Go To: The Story of the Math Majors, Bridge Players, Engineers, Chess Wizards, Scientists and Iconoclasts Who Were the Hero Programmers of the Software Revolution; Claudia Dreifus's Scientific Conversations: Interviews on Science from The New York Times; and Dava Sobel's international bestseller Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love.

In 2006, work continued on profiles of Nikolai Vavilov, Max Perutz, and William Hamilton.

Books about the relevance of technology to daily life also find occasional support. In 2005, Brian Hayes published Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape (Norton), a landmark, lavishly illustrated book about the built environment. Infrastructure, which describes with unprecedented clarity and depth the human-made world we all inhabit but rarely see, has not yet received the attention it deserves.

Previously Theresa Riordan published Inventing Beauty: A History of Innovations That Have Made Us Beautiful (Broadway/Doubleday) , an illustrated account of the technology and culture of beautification. Other books in this category include: Wondrous Contrivances: Technology at the Threshold by Merrit Ierley, an engaging look at Americans' embrace of technology across the years; Grand Central Terminal: Railroads, Engineering, and Architecture in New York City by Kurt C. Schlichting, a detailed account of a landmark engineering and construction project; and Women and the Machine: Representations from the Spinning Wheel to the Electronic Age by Julie Wosk, an historic overview of how women and machines have been represented in art, advertising and literature.

Books in progress in this category include Robert Kanigel’s study of the material and cultural history of leather and Henry Petroski about the technology, and every other aspect, of the toothpick.

Sloan also supported both editions of A Field Guide for Science Writers (Oxford), the official guide of the National Association of Science Writers edited by Deborah Blum, Mary Knudsen and Robin Marantz Henig.

The Sloan Technology Book Series, now fully commissioned, makes available to the general public readable and accurate accounts of the major twentieth century technologies. Sixteen books have been published to date with one more, Horace Judson’s Technology of the Gene, forthcoming from Norton. Most of the earlier books in the series are available in paperback editions. For a full list, see public_books.shtml.

The Foundation has launched a new book series, in partnership with Doubleday publishers, to celebrate the lives of the great inventors/entrepreneurs. A Sloan commissioning editor, Jesse Cohen, has been appointed to work with the series editor, Gerald Howard of Doubleday.

Radio

Most Foundation-supported radio coverage consists of short segments on science and technology topics. These are broadcast daily and sometimes weekly on The World on Public Radio International, on The Osgood File on CBS Radio, and on National Public Radio's popular news magazines, including Ira Flatow’s Science Friday which focuses on the relationship between science and the arts. Over 20 million listeners hear at least one of these science and technology broadcasts each week.

In 2005-2006, new grants went to New York’s public radio station, WNYC, for increased science coverage on Studio 360, the popular cultural affairs show hosted by Kurt Anderson. Studio 360 assembled a science advisory board for this purpose including Mario Livio a Senior Astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute; David Sulzer a professor at Columbia University's Laboratory of Dopamine Neurotransmission and a classical violinist/composer; Michael Hawley, Director of Special Projects and founder of MIT's GO Expeditions program; Vijay Iyer, a young pianist with a Ph.D. in music and cognitive science from U.C. Berkeley; Felice Frankel, science photographer at MIT whose images have appeared on the covers of Nature, Science, Wired, & Newsweek; and Alexej Jerschow Professor of Chemistry at New York University whose research interest include NMR spectroscopy, imaging, and microscopy.

In 2006, Sloan also gave a major grant to WNYC’s Radio Labs, an innovative new one-hour series on science, hosted by Robert Krulwich and Jad Abumrad. Radio Labs, a joint venture with NPR, is produced in bi-annual seasons of 5 hour-long programs, allowing station managers to select how best to air the program. Each hour of Radio Labs centers on a core scientific theme and uses rich audio production techniques and a range of forms. NPR reporters from the Science Desk file stories for Radio Labs and, in turn, NPR airs segments from Radio Labs on All Things Considered and Morning Edition. Scientist advisors include Oliver Sacks, Brian Greene and Robert Sapolsky.

Public Television

The Foundation continues to be a major supporter of public television documentaries about science and scientists and about the role of technology in society.

Sloan has funded the production of many science and technology television documentaries on PBS's American Experience with the aim of broadening our view of the nation’s history and of the formative—and underappreciated--role of science and technology.  In 2006, WGBH’s award-winning history series aired three Sloan-supported shows: The Alaskan Pipeline, about the building of the 800-mile pipeline into the Arctic wilderness; Test Tube Babies about the beginnings of in vitro fertilization; and The Great Fever, about scientists successful effort to eradicate yellow fever by isolating the mosquito as the vector.

In 2006, NOVA Science Now, a new magazine show supported by Sloan for its personal profiles of working scientists, received two Emmy nominations. NOVA also aired Dreams of Flight about the pioneering aviator Santos-Dumont and in early 2007 it will feature Forgotten Genius, a two-hour dramatization of Percy Julian, the first African-American elected to the National Academy of Sciences. NOVA also received major support to develop a new mini-series, Fabric of the Cosmos, a sequel to The Elegant Universe also based on a Brian Greene bestseller by the same title.

In 2006, WNET/13 aired Warplane, a four-part series about the technological development of the airplane. New York’s PBS station also received Sloan support to develop a new series, The Human Spark with Alan Alda. In 2005, WNET/13 broadcast the foundation-supported 5-part series DNA, which featured James Watson and won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Science, Technology or Nature programming.

Other recent Sloan-supported documentaries on PBS, both presented by KQED, include Rosemarie Reed’s The Path to Nuclear Fission: The Story of Lisa Meitner and Otto Hahn, which won the Aurora Award for best historical documentary. Reed subsequently received support to develop documentaries about three women in science. Bill Jersey and Michael Schwarz’s Ending AIDS, narrated by Richard Gere and based on the Sloan book, Shots in the Dark about the search for an AIDS vaccine, was also broadcast in 2006. Ending AIDS, an unusually frank look at the process of doing science before the outcome is known, was nominated for a Peabody and has been screened at international AIDS conferences and film festivals. Schwarz and Jersey are currently developing a documentary about fractal geometry and Benoit Mandelbrot.

In 2006, independent producer John Palfreman continued work on The Great Gadfly, a documentary about maverick scientist Tommy Gold.

In 2005, The Building of the Alaskan Highway aired on American Experience and attracted one of the show’s largest audiences. Previous broadcasts include: Golden Gate Bridge a show about the construction of San Francisco's famous landmark; The Pill, about the social and scientific history of the birth control pill that premiered at The Sundance Film Festival, won an Emmy; The Iron Road, a two-hour program about the building of the transcontinental railroad;  A Brilliant Madness, the true story of the mathematician John Nash, the subject of Sylvia Nasar's best-selling biography and the Oscar-winning film, A Beautiful Mind.

In 2005, Sloan also provided support for the NOVA broadcast of Einstein’s Big Idea, a widely seen show based on E=MC2 , the popular book by David Bodanis about the world’s most famous equation.

In 2005, the foundation also supported the National Geographic broadcast of Guns, Germs and Steel, based on Jared Diamond’s prizewinning bestseller.

In 2004, The Elegant Universe , a three-part series on string theory based on the best-selling book of the same title by physicist and author Brian Greene aired on NOVA and attracted over 7 million viewers. The popular, critically acclaimed series, which received a major grant from the Foundation, also won the coveted 2004 Peabody Award for best science documentary and an Emmy award.

In 2005, Light Speed a 2004 WNET/13 Innovation documentary about fiber optics inspired by Jeff Hecht's Sloan Technology Series book, City of Light , won the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award.

In 2004, WGBH’s new History Unit aired They Made America, a four part series based on Harold Evans foundation-supported book about great American innovators and NOVA received Sloan support for Origins, a four-part miniseries about the beginnings of Earth, life and the Universe, hosted by astrophysicist Neal deGrasse Tyson..

Previously, the Foundation funded the Twin Cities production of Benjamin Franklin, a popular three-part biography of the legendary statesman and Founding Father who was also a pioneering scientist and inventor. The show won the Emmy Award in 2003.

In 2003, a three-part Socratic Dialogue series on the scientific, legal, and moral aspects of coping with genetic information, Our Genes, Our Choices on WNET/13, aired with Foundation support.

Other noteworthy projects supported by the Foundation include WNET/13's highly successful production of Frontier House, a six-part series showing how four modern families in 1880's Montana cope with 19th century technology.

The Foundation also funded a television version of Michael Frayn's Tony-winning play Copenhagen , adapted by the playwright, on KCET/PBS Hollywood Presents. Two documentaries by Great Projects that received Foundation support were The Building of America , a four-part series on great civil engineering feats and Rebuilding America , a 90-minute documentary about the clean-up at Ground Zero that featured exclusive footage of the massive recovery effort.

The Foundation has also supported the Science and Technology News Network and The American Communications Foundation to increase television coverage of science and technology news stories.

In 2004, a Foundation meeting brought together professionals from broadcast, cable, satellite and digital media to explore the possibility of a science channel.

Commercial Television and Films

Note: The Foundation does not accept unsolicited screenplays or treatments or pitch letters. You may contact the individual organizations whose programs we support directly.

Film Schools: The goal of the film schools program is to influence the next generation of filmmakers to create more realistic and dramatic stories about science and technology and to challenge existing stereotypes about scientists and engineers through the visual media. This innovative program, now in its tenth year, awards prizes at six leading film schools to stimulate top students to write and produce new film and television shows about scientists and engineers: American Film Institute ; UCLA School of Theater, Film,and Television ; Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama ; Columbia University Film Department ; NYU Tisch School of the Arts ; and USC School of Cinema-Television . In addition to screenwriting and production awards, there are now prizes in animation and a first feature film.

In 2006, Nicole Perlman’s Challenger, a script that originally received a Sloan prize when the screenwriter was an undergraduate at NYU and was subsequently developed by the Sloan-Tribeca program (see below), landed a major production deal and is slated for production in 2007.  The film, which deals with Richard Feynman’s role in the investigation of the Challenger disaster, illustrates the foundation’s goal of supporting young filmmakers who tackle science and technology at every stage in their careers. In 2006, Variety named Perlman as one of the ”ten screenwriters to watch.”

In 2006, Carnegie Mellon film students produced two science and technology teleplays that were broadcast on Pittsburgh public television. The shows, mentored by acclaimed television producer John Welles, received two Bronze Tellys for outstanding writing.

In late 2005, the third Sloan Film Summit was held at the Tribeca Film Institute and brought over 100 Sloan-award-winning student filmmakers and screenwriters to New York. In addition to screenings, staged readings and panels with leading scientists and filmmakers, students attended pitch sessions with executives from leading Hollywood studios and independent production houses. A compilation DVD and logbook was sent out to industry leaders.

In 2006, Nikki del Monicco and Ronald Dottin’s Indelible, recipient of a $100,000 first feature prize at Columbia University, was financed and cast with production slated for 2007. Lisa Robinson's Synapse, recipient of the first-ever $100,000 Sloan First Feature Film Prize, awarded at NYU, attracted additional financing and an all-star cast including Julianne Nicolsen, Ben Chaplin and John Lithgow with Yael Melamed and Eva Kolodner of Salty Features producing.

Film Festivals: The Foundation seeks to increase visibility for new feature films that probe science and technology with insight and depict scientists and engineers in fresh, entertaining or provocative ways.Sloan has three main film festival partners: The Hamptons International Film Festival, the Tribeca Film Institute and the Sundance  Film Institute. In 2006, Sloan also provided support for the Malibu Celebration of Film, a new “festival of festivals” showcasing films that had won awards at previous festivals. Three previous Sloan-winning films—Dopamine, Madness and Genius and Primer—were screened for the Malibu community along with seven prize-winning student films.

Sloan has funded the Hamptons International Film Festival (HIFF) to establish the first Sloan Feature Film Prize in Science and Technology. In 2006, the $25,000 cash prize went to Darren Aronosky’s The Fountain for its portrait of a biologist (Hugh Jackman) trying to save his beloved wife (Rachel Weisz)) from cancer by pushing against the frontiers of science. The film, by the acclaimed director of Pi, was the subject of a Hamptons panel that included a discussion of current research on cancer and aging with Aronosky, his co-writer Ari Handel, a neurobioligist, and Rockefeller University scientists 

Previous Sloan awards at the Hamptons have gone to Sue Rynard’s Kardia, Bill Condon’s Kinsey, Ryan Eslinger's Madness and Genius, Michael Apted’s Enigma, Lynn Hershman Leeson’s Teknolust and Maggie Greenwald’s Songcatcher.

The 2006 HIFF Festival also included a staged reading of a screenplay about Hedy Lamarr, Face Value, under development (see below)

A founding sponsor of the Tribeca Film Festival , The Foundation also partnered with the Tribeca Film Institute in 2006 for the fifth year in a row. Several films were shown as part of the Science and Technology Film Panel at Tribeca, including Kettle of Fish and Chixiclub. Highlights at the festival included three staged readings of new Sloan-sponsored screenplays: Oscar-winning screenwriter and playwright Kenneth Lonergan’s Starry Messenger, about an undistinguished 43-year-old astronomer, played by Mathew Broderick, who teaches adult classes at the Hayden Planetarium while grappling with the challenges of an ordinary life; Project Mustard, a comedy about a fictitious 1960s British team of scientists and engineers who enter the race to reach the moon against the US and Russia, with Robert Vaughn; and Challenger about Richard Feynman’s role in the investigation of the space shuttle disaster, with Judd Hirsch. The Museum of Natural History’s Neil de Grasse Tyson and NASA’s Robert Frosch participated in the discussions, which were moderated by John Hockenberry and Ira Flatow.

The 2006 Tribeca Film festival also featured a Sloan-sponsored panel on The Biology of King Kong, a discussion about Peter Jackson’s special-effects extravaganza with renowned animal behaviorist Roger Fouts Dr. Amy Vedder of Wildlife Conservation Society, and Joe Letteri, who won the Academy Award for King Kong’s special effects. ABC News correspondent and NPR contributor Robert Krulwich hosted the discussion

At the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, Andrucha Waddington’s House of Sand won the Sloan Feature Film Prize. The film, a poetic mediation on the physics of time and the biology of human variation, follows three generations of women in one family who seek meaning and permanence in a world marked by dramatic technological change. House of Sand won standing ovations at Berlin and other major festivals and was release theatrically to critical acclaim.

Previous Sloan winners at Sundance include Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man, Shane Carruth’s Primer and Marc Decena’s Dopamine.

Film and Television Development: The Foundation seeks to create and develop new scripts about science and technology and to see them into commercial production at the major studios and networks. It has screenplay development programs with Tribeca, Sundance and the Hamtpons, as well as select independent partners. Please note the Foundation does not accept unsolicited screenplays, treatments or pitch letters. You send any inquiries directly to the organizations we support.

In 2006, Sloan’s partnership with producers Jane Rosenthal and Robert De Niro of the Tribeca Film Institute continued to make major strides as several projects of the Tribeca Sloan Screenplay Development Program neared production.

Nicole Perlman’s Challenger was financed by Eight Mile Entertainment with Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff) attached to direct and David Strathairn (Good Night and Good Luck) set to star as Richard Feynman.

David Baxter’s Tribeca/Sloan screenplay, Broken Code, about DNA researcher Rosalind Franklin, attracted financing from the British Film Council and Capitol Films after legendary director Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show) signed on to direct.

Kenneth Lonnegran’s Starry Messenger, with Mathew Borderick starring and Scott Rudin producing, will appear on Broadway in 2007 before being adapted by Lonnergan into a screenplay for feature production.

Other projects under development in the Tribeca/Sloan program include Dan Zefff’s Project Mustard, Sean Lawrence Ott’s Hubble and Penny Penniston Love is Brilliant. Screenplay advisors include Eric Roth, Stephen Gaghan, Nora Ephron, Ron Nyswaner, Jay Cocks and Henry Bean. Scientist advisors include Brian Greene, Harold Varmus, Robert Frosch, Neil De Grasse Tyson

For all inquiries regarding script submissions, please contact Sydney Meeks or Peggy Gormley at sloanscripts@tribecafilminstitute.org.

In 2006, Sloan continued to work with the Sundance Institute to support an annual Sloan Fellow to develop a science and technology script through the Sundance Filmmakers Lab and to provide a Commissioning Fund for a film project in the early stages of development. Philippe Barcinski’s Not by Chance, a drama about a traffic engineer in Brazil, was shot in 2006 and will be screened at festivals in 2007, making it the first finished film to emerge from this new program.

Greg Harrison(November) first recipient of a commissioning grant, completed his screenplay, The Radioactive Boy Scout which is being developed with Sydney Kimmel Entertainment and has a first look deal with Warner Independent.

In 2006, Lisa Krueger’s Sugar Pill, a comedy drama about human volunteers in clinical research trials, was selected for the Sloan commissioning fund at Sundance and Braden King was selected as the Sloan Lab fellow for his screenplay Here, about a photographer and a cartographer in Armenia.

For information on the Sundance submissions please contact Linda Goldstein at FeatureFilmProgram@sundance.org .

 Sloan continues to work with the Hamptons International Film Festival to develop science and technology scripts through its Hamptons Screenwriting Conference.

In 2006, Gretchen Somerfeld’s Face Value, a screenplay about legendary screen siren Hedy Lamarr, who was also a pioneering inventor of “frequency hopping,” was further developed through the Hamptons program, with Charles Randolph (The Life of David Gale, The Interpeter) as mentor. The script, with a story by Somerfeld and David Baxter, was originally developed by the Tribeca Sloan partnership (with Jay Cocks as mentor) and also received a staged reading at the 2006 Hamtpons Festival, directed by Stu Zicherman. Bill Ford, of the Ford Modeling Agency, is considering Face Value as a signature project for the agency’s new film production unit. 

In 2006, Jeffrey Alschuler’s Brilliant Pebbles was also selected for the Hamptons Sloan screenwriting program. Previous scripts under development include Mapping Swack by Bill Rebeck, Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz's Mutter, Casper Wong's Baby Face, Denise Pullen’s Riding Fire and Robert Whitehill’s UXO.

For script submissions, please contact Vanessa Wanger at hiff@hamptonsfilmfest.org.

 The Foundation is also working with acclaimed actor, producer and director Jacques Perrin (Winged Migration, Microcosmos ) and his Galatee Films team on an ambitious project, Oceans. The film, which draws on a major Sloan-supported scientific project involving research of the oceans (see under Census of Marine Life) involves a unique blend of documentary footage and a fictional storyline. Pathe Films will co-produce along with Jake Eberts (March of the Penguins, Ghandi)

 

Theater

The goal of this program is to encourage leading artists and playwrights to create new works about scientists and engineers that will break down the barrier between "the two cultures." The Foundation’s major partners include The Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Manhattan Theatre Club and The Magic Theatre with a new pilot program underway at Playwrights Horizon. The Foundation has been a leading force in commissioning and producing new science and technology plays and has helped to stimulate numerous playwrights to tackle these subjects while also creating a more hospitable environment among the theater-going public for such fare, signaling an important cultural shift.

With Foundation support, the Ensemble Studio Theater (EST) has established a major program focused on science and technology plays and beginning in 1998, it launched a national competition for new dramatic works exploring the worlds of science and technology. Each year, several hundred play submissions are received and evaluated and over a dozen full-length and one-act plays are commissioned at EST. The annual EST/Sloan First Light Festival, a month-long festival focused on new science and technology plays, features a mainstage production and a series of staged readings, workshops, cabarets and satellite events in New York. Under its partnership with Sloan, EST also provides grants to regional theaters across the country to produce work it has commissioned and/or staged. Since 1998, over 100 writers, composers, choreographers and theater companies have received EST/Sloan commissions with the resulting work presented in developmental readings and workshops engaging over 1000 artists. Plays originally commissioned by the EST/Sloan project have been produced at major venues around the country, including The Black Repertory Theatre, American Conservatory Theater (San Francisco), The Empty Space Theater (Seattle), Actors Theater of Louisville and the Williamstown Theatre Festival.

In 2006, Cassandra Medley’s compelling family drama about race and genetics, Relativity, was the EST/Sloan mainstage production. Originally commissioned by EST/Sloan, the play was subsequently developed at The Magic Theater in San Francisco and the Black Repertory Theater of St. Louis before opening in New York under Tavis Wilks direction to excellent notices. Medley subsequently won the 2006 Audelco-August Wilson Award for outstanding playwright and Relativity was published by Broadway Play Publishing.

Other work that appeared as part of the 2006 EST/Sloan Festival included: Bone Portraits, an avante garde play about the discovery of x-rays and the splitting of the atom by Deborah Stein and Lear DeBonnet that ran at Walkerspace; four public readings: Ephemeris by Domic Taylor, Constant by David Valdes Greenwood, Unnatural History by Judith Montague and Fishing with Tony and Joe by Jeffrey Stanley; six workshops including Monkeys Uncle by Mathew Wells, Serendib by David Zellnik, Galois by Sung Rno, Progress in Flying by Lynn Rosen, Infinite Potential by Samarra Kanegis, and Moving Picture by Dan O’Brien; and Cabaret Scientifique with Eric Davis, Alec Duffy, Les Freres Corbusier, Noah Tarnow and The Big Quiz Thing, The Organ Donors and The Percodettes, and Silent Voice.

Two notable developmental workshops of EST/Sloan plays that were held in 2006 included Serendib by David Zellnik, a Shakespearean comedy about scientists studying Macaque monkeys, and inadvertently, themselves, in Sri Lanka; and The Sequence by Paul Mullin, a play about the race for the human genome with the clashing personalities and philosophies of Craig Venter and Francis Collins as seen by a reporter.

In 2006, work originally commissioned and performed as part of the EST/Sloan project appeared nationwide including Paul Mullins Louis Slotin Sonata which played at The Empty Space in Seattle and Carey Peloff’s Luminescence Dating, performed at The Magic Theater in San Francisco.

In 2002, the EST/Sloan main-stage production featured The Secret Order by Bob Clyman. The play drew enthusiastic audiences and rFeceived excellent reviews. In 2003, producer Norman Twain mounted the play at the Laguna Playhouse where it attracted large audiences and received stellar notices. The Secret Order continues to be developed for a possible Broadway opening.

In 2000, the EST/Sloan First Light Festival introduced Michael Frayn's landmark science play, Copenhagen to New York with a daylong special event, Creating Copenhagen, exploring the play's scientific, historical and theatrical perspectives. Copenhagen went on to a successful two-year run on Broadway and a Tony Award for best play and was subsequently adapted by Frayn for television under a foundation grant to KCET, the Los Angeles PBS station.

Other EST/Sloan mainstage productions previously produced at EST include: String Fever by Jacquelyn Reingold which starred Cynthia Nixon and broke the EST box office record. String Fever was later published by Samuel R. French and selected for a 2003 anthology of best plays by women playwrights; Michael Holinger's Tooth and Claw, about the clash between environmentalists and native fisherman on the Gallapagos Islands which debuted at the Arden Theater; Moving Bodies by Arthur Giron, an inspired and totally original look at Richard Feynman’s life, also seen in 2001 at the Marin County Playhouse in California; Tesla's Letters by Jeff Stanley, later performed in Virginia and at the Edinburgh Fringe. The program’s debut play was Flight by Arthur Giron, a penetrating family drama about the Wright Brothers.

Plays originally commissioned or supported in part by EST/Sloan that have been produced at other venues include Einstein's Gift by Vern Thiessen (Epic Theater, New York), Schroedinger’s Cat by Mathew Welles (Magic Theater), Expedition 6 by Bill Pullman (Denver Center Theatre) People Be Heard by Quincy Long (Playwrights Horizons, NYC), The Invasion of the Colored People by Ellen Lewis (The Great American History Theatre, Saint Paul, MN) The Flid Show by Richard Willett (New Directions Theater), A Nervous Smile by John Belluso (Actors Theatre of Louisville’s HUMANA Festival), Fzzn Grrl by Mojie Crigler (Carnegie Mellon University), Restoring the Sun by Joe Sutton (Cleveland Play House; Contemporary Stage Company, Wilmington, DE).

In 2005, partly in response to the Laurence Summers controversy and timed to the debut of Luminescence Dating, a play about a female archeologist, the EST/Sloan Project partnered with the New York Academy of Sciences’ Women Investigator Network to host a panel discussion titled “Women in Science: Are They Being Held Back?” The panel, moderated by Cornelia Dean of The New York Times included notable scientists on both sides of the issue: Diane Halpern (former president of the American Psychological Association); Richard Haier (Professor of Neuroscience at the University of California, Irvine); Linda Gottfredson (Director of the Center for the Study of Intelligence at University of Delaware/Johns Hopkins University);Joshua Aronson (Professor of Psychology at New York University); and Nancy Hopkins (Professor of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

For submissions or more information on the EST/Sloan Project, please contact Graham Gillis or Carlos Armesto at The Ensemble Studio Theater, 549 West 52nd Street, New York, NY 10019. Email: sloanproject@ensemblestudiotheatre.org . Phone: 212-247-4982 x20 .

In 2000, the Foundation also began a new partnership with the Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) to develop new plays about science and technology and to nurture playwrights with an interest in these subjects. The first Sloan/MTC collaboration centered on David Auburn's Proof, a surprise hit that went from Off-Broadway to Broadway and won both the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Proof was the longest running non-musical Broadway drama in over 30 years and continues to play at theaters across the U.S.  A film version of Proof, starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Anthony Hopkins was released by The Weinstein Company in 2005.

In 2004, the Foundation expanded its program with MTC to include three playwright commissions a year plus a production grant for a science and technology play. The three playwrights selected in 2004 were Shelagh Stephenson, Timberlake Wertenbaker and Peter Morris.

In 2005, commissions went to Byrony Lavery, acclaimed playwright of Frozen, Itamar Moses and to Ron Hutchinson for a play about botanist Jules Emile Planchon and his search for a cure to the disease that is killing off French vineyards. 

2006 commissions were awarded to Dava Sobel, bestselling author of Galileo’s Daughter and Longitude, for a new play about Copernicus and the revolution he set in motion, to Eric Simonson, acclaimed Steppenwolf director and Oscar-winning filmmaker, and to Liz Meriwether and Jason Wells.

In 2006, the MTC/Sloan program featured a staged reading of Shelagh Stephenson’s Fallout at the City Center Stage I as part of its 6@7 Rehearsed Readings of New Works series, with Hope Davis, Denis O'Hare and Renee d’Auberjonois. Fallout, a play about a blacklisted screenwriter confronting J. Robert Oppenheimer that was commissioned by MTC/Sloan, is being considered for a possible mainstage production at MTC. Other 2006 staged reading included Stephen Belber’s Asymmetrical Battlefield, renamed Geometry of Fire, about two men in Washington DC who investigate the effects of chemical weapons on citizens and soldiers.

Previous staged readings of MTC/Sloan work include John Walch's The Nature of Mutation, which will be produced in the 2006-07 season at New York City’s Urban Stages and Clouds Hill by Charles Evered, which is being turned into a film.  In 2004, the Sloan/MTC program featured a full workshop with live music from Glen Burger's new play On Words and Onwards, the first recipient of the MTC/Sloan playwrighting fellowship.

MTC also held a workshop of Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s The Muckle Man, which will receive its world premiere at Pittsburgh’s City Theatre in 2007.

In 2003, Humble Boy made its North American debut at MTC. The award-winning play by Charlotte Jones, starring Blair Brown and Jared Harris, was supported by the MTC/Sloan program.

For submissions or more information about the MTC/Sloan program, please contact Annie MacRae at the Manhattan Theatre Club, 212-399-3000 or amacrae@mtc-nyc.org.

More recently, Sloan has entered into a partnership with The Magic Theater in San Francisco, whose executive director, Chris Smith, formerly headed the Sloan Project at EST. To date The Magic has produced one main stage play, The Ice Breaker by David Rambo, about a climate scientist’s relationship with a graduate student, which was originally commissioned by the ASK Theater at the Geffen Playhouse and developed by the Denver Theater Company; and BOT by C. Michele Kaplan, which will debut in 2007. The Ice Breaker is also part of the National New Play Network’s Continued Life Project and will be performed as a “rolling world premiere” at New Repertory Theatre, Watertown, MA and Phoenix Theatre, Indianapolis, IN.

In 2006, The Magic held a Sloan Slam featuring 5 new science plays read by 29 actors over four days including Dandelion by Mia Chung, Celestial Bodies by Pam Winfrey, Yellowcake by Ann Cummins, The Los Alamos Project by Z Space Collective and Dragon Tiger, Phoenix by Cherylene Lee.

The Magic also produced staged readings of science plays at the Exploratorium including Walk Into the Sea by Elaine Romero, Baby M by Lauren Gunderson, The Stem Cell Research Plays by Jessica Fleitman, Clayton Hoff, Kristina Hontalas & Stacy Johnstone and The Ruby Vector by Karla Jennings.

The Magic has commissioned five new plays including Dark Matters by Oliver Mayer and K, or The Future’s So Green by Ken Watt. It has entered into collaborations with four West Coast theaters for commissioning new science plays including The Denver Center Theatre Company, Portland Center Stage, San Diego Repertory Theater and The Empty Space. And at the 2006 BioAgenda Summit, The Magic performed excerpts from four science-themed plays: Henrik Ibsen’s Enemy of the People, Jerome Roberts and Robert E. Lee’s Inherit the Wind, Michael Hollinger’s Tooth And Claw and David Rambo’s The Ice Breaker.

For submissions or further information about The Magic Theater, please contact Mark Routhier, markr@magictheatre.org or 415-401-8001 x19.

A new grant to Playwrights Horizon will offer one major commission each year, plus production support, for a new play about science and technology.

The Foundation very occasionally supports individual or one-off efforts. It has worked with producer and lyricist Craig Hatkoff and producers Jane Rosenthal and Robert de Niro on a rock musical about Galileo.

In 2003, Sloan supported a special evening to launch the new Second Stage production of The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. The evening, hosted by Leonard Lopate, featured excerpts from the play along with a discussion among the playwright Mary Zimmerman, Brian Greene and Margaret Livingstone.

In 2002, Sloan supported a discussion with actor and author Steve Martin about his new book, Funny Numbers. The discussion, hosted by Robert Osserman of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute , featured an appearance by actor Robin Williams and a lively riff on math, science and everyday life.

In 2001, the Foundation supported the opening of Alan Alda's QED at the Marc Taper Forum in Los Angeles. The play, about the physicist Richard Feynman, sold out its run at the Taper and then moved to Lincoln Center in New York.

Previous theatrical events included support for a discussion with playwright Tom Stoppard about mathematics in his play, Arcadia with the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute at Berkeley.

The Internet and New Media

The Foundation occasionally sponsors innovative efforts to reach a broad or cross-cultural audience through use of new media.

One major effort involving the Internet and the enormous new capabilities of the world wide web has evolved into a separate program for mass digitization and open access of books and other forms of recorded human knowledge.  See under Selected National Issues: Universal Access to Recorded Knowledge.

In 2006, Sloan gave the Brooklyn Academy of Music an officer grant to support a multimedia opera about inventor Nikola Tesla, Violet Fire. The event included discussions about Tesla’s role in the history of technology and a short film about Tesla, The Visionary by Joel Shapiro, that was the recipient of a Sloan Prize at Columbia University Film School.

In 2005-2006, the Foundation supported an exhibition Pixar: 20 years of Animation at the Museum of Modern Art. The show looked at Steve Jobs’s legendary computer animation studio that has produced such seminal films as Finding Nemo, Cars, The Incredibles, Monsters Inc and Toy Story and explored the process of computer-generated animation and the role of technology for modeling, animating, lighting and rendering figures in life-like detail. There was also a Sloan-supported discussion about careers in the computer animation industry.

Previously, Sloan gave a grant to Project Rebirth to create a web site chronicling the rebuilding at Ground Zero. Since early 2002, Project Rebirth has been taking one photograph every five minutes from seven time-lapse cameras strategically sited around Ground Zero.The web site includes a real-time camera trained on Ground Zero, time lapse loops covering the past three years of rebuilding and detailed explanations of the engineering, architecture and other technical challenges involved in this historic effort.

In 2004, the Foundation also gave mathematician David Gale an officer grant to explore the possibility of an on-line or virtual math museum. Other Sloan forays in this area have included support for Arizona State University Foundation and the Institute of Human Origins in establishing a national web site on human evolution, http://www.becominghuman.org/ . The site has won several awards.

The Foundation also contributed to a major conference at MIT, Image and Meaning about communicating science and technology through visual media.

The Foundation previously funded an exhibition and webcasts on human body imaging technology at the San Francisco Exploratorium .

In 2002, Sloan supported Art and Optics , a special conference at NYU's New York Institute for the Humanities. The conference examined a provocative thesis by painter David Hockney and physicist Charles Falco about the hidden use of optical devices by the Great Masters.

Scientists' Understanding of the Public

Sloan’s Public Understanding of Science program has always aimed at bridging the gap between the two cultures, but it has focused primarily on informing the lay public about scientists and engineers. In 2006, the Foundation began exploring ways of reaching scientists and engineers so that they can learn to understand better how they and their work are perceived by the broader culture. Issues such as cloning, nuclear power, fetal tissue research, genetically modified food, and bioterror might offer useful lessons to scientists and engineers on why the public does not always see eye to eye with them.

Most scientists agree that the public should learn to understand and appreciate what they do, whereas they are less comfortable with the idea that they should learn to understand and engage with the fears and apprehensions that their work may inspire, rightly or wrongly, in the public. But both ends of this conversation are necessary in a healthy and robust democracy.

In 2006, with Sloan support, Richard Heffner’s long-running PBS series The Open Mind broadcast an interview with Nobelist and Rockefeller University President Paul Nurse. Nurse, who has written eloquently on this topic, spoke about the scientist’s “license to operate,” a license that can be revoked if scientists lose the public trust.

The Foundation is exploring other efforts in this area and is in discussions with The American Academy of Arts and Sciences and with various artists about unconventional ways to reach scientists and initiate a broader cultural conversation.