Founder of the Benjamin T. Chu Distinguished Lecture

Dr. Benjamin T. Chu Distinguished Lecture

In honor of Dr. Peter J.W. Debye

The Dr. Benjamin T. Chu Distinguished Lecture celebrates the meeting of faith and reason at Catholic institutions, as well as the major contribution that Norbertines have made through history to the sciences.

The lecture invites scholars who not only have distinguished themselves in the physical sciences but who also have demonstrated that faith plays a significant role in their work and/or personal life.

Dr. Benjamin Chu is a 1955 graduate and past trustee of St. Norbert College. One of the college’s earliest Asian students, he was born in China in 1932 and was steered to SNC by Irish Jesuits who ran a high school in Hong Kong. He would go on to a distinguished career as a chemist, researcher and entrepreneur at SUNY-Stony Brook.

While pursuing his graduate and postdoctoral work at Cornell University, Chu studied under the acclaimed physicist and physical chemist Dr. Peter J.W. Debye, winner of the 1936 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Debye would prove to be a major and lasting influence on countless students, including Ben.

2025 lecture

Kenneth R. Miller

April 2, 2025 7:00 p.m. - Fort Howard Theater

About the speaker

Kenneth R. Miller Kenneth R. Miller is Emeritus Professor of Biology at Brown University, where he earned his undergraduate degree and returned in 1980 after completing a Ph.D. at the University of Colorado and serving as an Assistant Professor at Harvard. He is a leading researcher in cell membrane structure and function, with over 70 scientific publications in top journals like CELL and Nature. His popular books include Finding Darwin‘s God—A Scientist’s Search for Common Ground between God and Evolution and most recently The Human Instinct – How We Evolved to have Reason, Consciousness, and Free Will. Miller is coauthor of widely used biology textbooks with Joseph S. Levine and has received numerous accolades, including six major teaching awards at Brown. His honors include the Public Service Award from the American Society for Cell Biology, the Distinguished Service Award from the National Association of Biology Teachers, the AAAS Award for Public Engagement with Science, the Laetare Medal from Notre Dame and in 2023 the McGovern Science and Society Award from Sigma Xi, the scientific honor society.

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