Noted biomedical researcher Dr. Richard A. Lerner, president of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., will give The Class of 1942 James B. Sumner Lecture Thursday, Sept. 14, and Friday, Sept. 15, on the Cornell campus.

Lerner will deliver two lectures, open the public, as a guest of the Cornell Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics. A general lecture will be at 4 p.m. Thursday in the auditorium of the Biotechnology Building and is titled "All Antibodies Have the Intrinsic Catalytic Capacity to Destroy Their Antigen." Lerner will give a second, more technical lecture, at noon Friday, in the same auditorium, with the title "Aldolase Antibodies."

Lerner's 30-year scientific career is particularly significant, not only for the broad scope of his achievements in several diverse areas of biomedical research, but for his leadership and vision in concurrently directing the totality of scientific activities at the Scripps Research Institute, the country's largest private, nonprofit biomedical research organization. His work spans a wide range of seemingly disparate discoveries, from unique insights into protein and peptide structure to the recent identification of a sleep-inducing lipid. He has been widely recognized by numerous prestigious societies and organizations in the United States and abroad.

Lerner graduated from Northwestern University and Stanford Medical School. Since 1970 he has held staff appointments at Wistar Institute in Philadelphia and at the Research Institute of Scripps Clinic (renamed the Scripps Research Institute). He served as chair of the Department of Molecular Biology at the Scripps Institute from 1982 to 1986, prior to assuming the presidency of the organization.

The Sumner Lectureship was established to honor the late Professor James B. Sumner, a Nobel laureate in chemistry (1946) who spent his entire professional career at Cornell, starting in 1913. Much of the endowment for the lectureship has been funded by the Sumner family and friends and members of the Cornell Class of 1942.