The Biological Sciences Department congratulates Dr. Robert Pollack, Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences, on the honor of being this year’s recipient of the Tannenbaum-Warner Award. This award celebrates “distinguished scholarship and exceptional service to The University Seminars at Columbia University.”
The University Seminars is “an ongoing community of partnerships each of which is constituted by scholars from multiple academic departments and disciplines, often including experts from outside academia, and is devoted to the study of an institution, practice, or issue of theoretical and/or practical importance.” Members are invited from Columbia, other institutions, and the surrounding community.
Early in his career, Dr. Pollack was recruited to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory by James Watson to establish a research program on reversion of cancer cells. He went on to receive tenure at SUNY Stony Brook Medical Center before returning to Columbia in 1978. He has been the recipient of the Alexander Hamilton Medal, the Gershom Mendes Seixas Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His 1998 Schoff Lectures, supported by The University Seminars, led to his third book The Faith of Biology and the Biology of Faith. He retired from Columbia in 2023 as Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences.
At the 78th Annual Dinner of The University Seminars, which will be held on Wednesday, May 7, 2025, Dr. Pollack will be honored alongside Tannenbaum Lecturer Margo Jefferson. A professor in the Creative Writing Department, Jefferson is an acclaimed critic and memoirist who received a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism when she was a staff writer at The New York Times. She has also received a National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, a Windham Campbell Award for nonfiction and a Rathbones Folio Award for nonfiction.
You can read more about the Tannenbaum-Warner Award here.
