A new technique enables the conversion of an ordinary camera
into a light-field camera capable of recording high-resolution,
multiperspective images. Dr. Joseph B. Lambert, the Clare
Hamilton Hall Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University,
will present this year's Sigma Xi lecture, entitled "Unraveling
the Past: The Application of Science to Archaeology." His talk,
which is free and open to the MIT community, will take place on
Monday, May 11 at 8:30pm in the Edgerton lecture theater (Rm
34-101). Professor Lambert's lecture will highlight the
contribution that analytical chemistry and materials science
have made to our knowledge of mankind's technological and
biological past, with examples that include the crack in the
Liberty Bell, the Vinland Map, Egyptian plaster, the stones used
in Stonehenge and the biochemical analysis of prehistoric human
skeletal remains. A noted organic physical chemist with a long-
time interest in archaeology, Professor Lambert is author of
Traces of the Past: Unraveling the