Festival welcomes Nobel-winning scientist

Professor Eric Kandel talks about how mind and brain relate to art

Nobel prize-winning scientist professor Eric Kandel is to speak on the opening day of the 2015 FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival. Kandel, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his work on memory storage in the brain, was born in Vienna and will talk about the great revolution in our understanding of the human mind that took place in Vienna around 1900. Vienna was the cultural capital of Europe in 1900 and leading artists and scientists – Freud, Schnitzler, Klimt, Kokoschka and Schiele – were swapping ideas that led to breakthroughs in psychology, brain science, literature and art. Kandel will look at the rich cultural life of Vienna, the ideas and advances that were made and the enduring influence they have today. Kandel is a professor at Columbia University, USA, a senior investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and a founding director of the Centre for Neurobiology and Behaviour at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. He is author of a memoir, In Search of Memory, winner of a Los Angeles Times Book Award.