In this lecture, Sir Simon Schama will discuss his new book, Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines and the Health of Nations, and address the Maimonidean enterprise of reconciling medical science, philosophy and Judaism. The lecture follows the epic path of the micro-biologist Waldemar Haffkine, who achieved brief fame as an originator of vaccines against cholera and bubonic plague, but after becoming a casualty of a miscarriage of medical justice, ended as a champion of orthodoxy.Optional tours of Yeshiva University Museum’s current exhibition, The Golden Path: Maimonides Across Eight Centuries will be offered before and after the lecture at 5:45 pm and 8:00 pm.

Books will be available for sales and signing by Sir Simon Schama after the program.

About the Speaker:
Sir Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University. He is author of 20 books, and writer-presenter of over 50 documentaries on art, history, and literature for BBC television. Sir Simon has been awarded numerous prizes and honors including the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature; the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement, and the Premio Antonio Feltrinelli Prize in historical sciences from the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome. His work has been translated into 23 languages, and his 20th and most recent book Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines and the Health of Nations, was published in September 2023.