This final edition of 2006 contains several interesting contributions on a wide range of topics. We are glad to present an interview with Eric Kandel, one of the most influential neuroscientists and recipients of the Nobel Prize, who talked with Austrian Information about his latest book, on the science of the mind, and his memories of Austria.
Austria provides interesting opportunities for international companies and investors that wish to establish a European headquarter. In addition to its geographic advantage of proximity to the emerging markets in Central and Eastern Europe, there are other compelling reasons for investors to select Austria as a business location. In an interview with Austrian Information, Gisbert T. Mayr, Director of the Austrian Business Agency’s North America Office, explains its activities in the U.S. and Canada.
Eric Kandel is known as one of the most influential neuroscientists of our time. Born 1929 in Vienna as the son of a Jewish toy shop owner, he emigrated to the United States at the age of nine to escape the Nazis. He received his undergraduate degree at Harvard in history before becoming interested in psychoanalysis and neuroscience. Since 1974 he has been a professor with the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia University in New York. In 2000, Eric Kandel was a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the cellular basis of learning and memory.
For over thirty years New Orleans has been the center of a model Austrian-American partnership. This relationship has fostered student and faculty exchanges between the University of New Orleans (UNO) and the Leopold Franzens University of Innsbruck. Eventually it led to the establishment of the Center for Austrian Culture and Commerce (Center Austria) at the University of New Orleans and a formal sister city agreement with Innsbruck. The University of New Orleans-Innsbruck International Summer School is one of the largest university-level summer programs for study abroad. and has brought over 7,000 students from all over the United States to the heart of the Austrian Alps. Austrian Information looks south to see if the fruitful relationship between Austria and New Orleans remains as the city tries to recover from the devestating effects of Hurricane Katrina.
Since 1957, when the Santa Fe Opera House was founded, Opera lovers have been drawn to New Mexico to enjoy the Summer Opera Festival. As Peter Pabisch illustrates in the following article, the summer festivals in America’s mecca of opera in Santa Fe have become a tradition much like that in Salzburg. Works by great Austrian composers like the Salzburg festival’s founders, Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, are performed regularly in Santa Fe. Yet, for the opera world, there are many other remarkable parallels between the two cities.
(1931 - 2006)
Ruth Morgenthau, former political adviser to U.S. presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter, as well as an adviser to the World Bank, died on September 11, 2006 at the age of 75. She was a member of the U.S. Delegation to the United Nations, an authority on the politics of the developing world and Professor Emeritus at Brandeis University.