DeWitt L. Sumners, Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at Florida State University, will present "Calculating the Secrets of Life: Mathematics in Biology and Medicine," at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 8, in the Keck Classroom (Room G52), Pettengill Hall, Bates College. The public is invited to attend the annual Richard W. Sampson Lecture, and admission is free. A reception in the ground-floor lobby will immediately follow the lecture.

Sumners co-directs the Program in Mathematics and Molecular Biology, a national research and training consortium supported by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Interfaces Program. His research interests are applications of mathematics in molecular biology and medical imaging. He serves as a member of the Board of Governors of the Minneapolis-based Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications and is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Computational Biology and the Journal of Knot Theory and Its Applications. 

Chair of his department at Florida State, Sumners received his B.Sc. in physics from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, and his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Cambridge in England. 

The annual Sampson Lecture at Bates is named in honor of Professor Emeritus Richard W. Sampson, of Lewiston, a member of the Bates faculty from 1952 until his retirement as professor of mathematics in 1990.