Judith Herzfeld

Judith Herzfeld is Professor Emerita of Biophysical Chemistry at Brandeis University. In academic appointments at Amherst College, Harvard Medical School and Brandeis University, her research and teaching crossed disciplinary boundaries. Her scientific work investigated biological functions at the molecular level using experimental and theoretical approaches from physics. In her most recent book, Choice, Compulsion, Consequences ... Doubting Free Will & Embracing Determinism, she brings that interdisciplinary perspective to free will, behavioral determinism and their implications for responsibility, personal meaning and public life. Herzfeld is also the author of Sense & Sensibility in Childbirth: A Guide to Supportive Obstetrical Care, and the short primer The Necessity of Entropy: the Macroscopic Argument, the Microscopic Response and Some Practical Consequences. She was educated in the New York City public schools, Barnard College, MIT and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.