Did You Know?

Dr. Bob Brier is an Egyptologist and Senior Research Fellow at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University. He earned his bachelor's degree from Hunter College and Ph.D. in Philosophy from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Professor Brier has twice been selected as a Fulbright Scholar and has received Long Island University's David Newton Award for Teaching Excellence in recognition of his achievements as a lecturer. He has served as Director of the National Endowment for the Humanities' Egyptology Today program. In 1994, Dr. Brier became the first person in 2,000 years to mummify a human cadaver in the ancient Egyptian style. This research was the subject of a National Geographic television special, Mr. Mummy. Dr. Brier is also the host of The Learning Channel's series The Great Egyptians. Professor Brier is the author of Ancient Egyptian Magic (1980), Egyptian Mummies (1994), Encyclopedia of Mummies (1998), The Murder of Tutankhamen: A True Story (1998), Daily Life in Ancient Egypt (1999), and numerous scholarly articles.

Scott Solomon is an Associate Teaching Professor at Rice University, where he teaches ecology, evolutionary biology, and scientific communication. He received his PhD in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior from The University of Texas at Austin. He has also worked as a visiting researcher with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC and with São Paulo State University in Rio Claro, Brazil.

Scott has taught field biology courses at Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Colorado and in the rainforests and coral reefs of Belize. He has also been a resident associate at Baker College, one of Rice’s residential colleges, and served as a faculty fellow at Rice’s Center for Teaching Excellence, where he acted as a liaison to other faculty. He received the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching and the Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award from Rice University as well as the Rising Star Award from the University of Illinois Laboratory High School.

Scott is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society for the Study of Evolution. He also serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Tropical Ecology. He regularly lectures on science topics at museums, schools, churches, and TEDx events. His writing and photography have appeared in such publications as Aeon, Nautilus, Slate, and WIRED. He is the author of Future Humans: Inside the Science of Our Continuing Evolution.

John Greene is a Professor of French at the University of Louisville, where he also serves as director of the Introductory French Program. He earned a PhD in French from the University of Wisconsin–Madison after completing his undergraduate studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. At the University of Louisville, in addition to teaching language, literature, civilization, and culture courses, Professor Greene teaches business French, French cinema, and a theater practicum that emphasizes language acquisition through performance. He has developed and taught graduate seminars that focus on Paris, French society and class structure, and Enlightenment material culture.

Professor Greene is the recipient of numerous teaching awards, including the President’s Distinguished Teaching Professor Award from the University of Louisville and the Dorothy S. Ludwig Excellence in Teaching Award from the American Association of Teachers of French (AATF). In addition, he won the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies’ Innovative Course Design Competition, and the French government named him a chevalier in the Ordre des Palmes académiques for services to education and culture.

Professor Greene’s research focuses mainly on the representation of material culture in Enlightenment and 19th-century French fiction and maritime narratives. His published work has appeared in books and journals on both sides of the Atlantic. He has received external funding to present and publish his research at the National Library of Australia in Canberra, UCLA’s William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, the Museum of London, and Paris’s Musée national de la Marine and Collège de France. He is an assistant editor for the French Review, the official journal of the AATF.