Princeton history professor to deliver 2024 Geddes W. Simpson Distinguished Lecture
The University of Maine, in partnership with The University of Maine Foundation, will host the 2024 Geddes W. Simpson Lecture, at 3:15 p.m. on Oct. 7 in Hill Auditorium at Barrows Hall.
This year’s Geddes W. Simpson’s lecture, “Pain, Opioids, and the Search for Relief: A Political History,” will be delivered by Keith Wailoo, Henry Putnam University Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University.
Wailoo is known for award-winning writing that is both academic and public facing, historical and timely. His books include “Pushing Cool: Big Tobacco, Racial Marketing, and the Untold Story of the Menthol Cigarette;” “Pain: A Political History;” “How Cancer Crossed the Color Line;” “Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health;” and “Drawing Blood: Technology and Disease Identity in Twentieth Century America.” He also co-authored “The Troubled Dream of Genetic Medicine” with Stephen Pemberton.
This endowed lecture series facilitates campus visits and presentations by prominent speakers with expertise at the interface of science and history. In the past, the series has hosted a broad range of speakers from varied academic disciplines.
Simpson was a distinguished faculty member who began his 55-year career at UMaine with the College of Life Sciences — which has since been renamed to the College of Earth, Life, and Health Sciences — and the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station in 1931. His research program focused on aphids in potato plants. Simpson served as the chair of the Entomology Department from 1954 until his retirement in 1974. He was the first recipient of the UMaine Presidential Research Achievement Award. Awarded emeritus status upon retirement, he continued to work part-time as an editor with the experiment station. UMaine Professor emeritus David C. Smith dedicated his history of the station to Simpson, noting that Simpson was “one of three men whose work I admire.”