Lowell Lecturer: Dr. Mark Plotkin

Witchdoctors & Biotechnology

Dr. Mark Plotkin

On Friday, April 7, at 8 pm in Science Center C, Dr. Mark Plotkin will deliver the annual Lowell Lecture on the topic of "Witchdoctors and Biotechnology." Devoted to major issues of our time, the Lowell Lecture is sponsored jointly by the Harvard University Extension School and the Lowell Institute of Boston and is a public service event for the community.

This lecture series is now 20 years old, and in that time we have heard from many distinguished speakers, including McGeorge Bundy on foreign affairs, Alfred Kahn on inflation, Gloria Steineim on feminism and democracy, Carl Sagan on nuclear winter, Art Buchwald on Washington politics, Doris Kearns Goodwin on the issue of character in presidential politics, Mortimer Adler on the Great Books, Ken Burns on the documentary as history, Gore Vidal on American politics and religion, Ellen Goodman on value judgments, Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, John Shattuck on conflict resolution, James Carroll on religious and political issues of the Holocaust, and last year Jill Ker Conway on women's lives.

This year's Lowell Lecturer has the signal distinction of not only being a world-famous ethnobotanist, but also the recipient of a Harvard Extension School undergraduate degree, an ALB in 1979. In 1974, after a semester at the University of Pennsylvania, Plotkin enrolled in an evening class at the Extension School, Biology 104 Plants and Human Affairs, taught by Harvard Professor Richard Evans Schultes, a founding father of the field of ethnobotany. The course proved to be a defining moment for Plotkin as he became a protégé of Professor Schultes and devoted himself to the field. He graduated with honors from the Extension School and received a scholarship to Yale University, which prepared him for his doctoral studies at Tufts University.

Plotkin is the author of Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice. The book became the subject of Amazon, a documentary that was nominated for an Academy Award in 1998. His new book, Medicine Quest: In Search of Nature's Healing Secrets, will be published in early April, and he will be in Boston to attend a fundraiser for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute on April 6, the night prior to delivering his Lowell Lecture.

Plotkin is executive director of the Amazon Conservation Team in Washington, DC. For the past 25 years he has been on numerous expeditions to the Amazon in an attempt to acquire and preserve the knowledge of the indigenous shamans, the tribal "medicine men" who know the curative powers of the Amazon's rainforest. The Amazon Conservation Team is an organization Plotkin founded with his wife, Liliana, a conservationist and the chief operating officer. It is dedicated to the preservation of the biological and cultural integrity of the Amazon rainforest, especially the knowledge of the shamans and their plants.

Dr. Plotkin will illustrate his lecture with slides, and he has agreed to sign copies of his book after the lecture. The evening promises to be memorable, and all Extension School graduates, students, and faculty are invited to attend.