The 2000 AAAS Annual Meeting and Science Innovation Exposition, held in Washington, D.C., drew the largest audience in recent years of nearly 6,000 attendees and more than 1,100 news room registrants. The meeting explored the theme of “Science in an Uncertain Millenium” by offering a variety of multidisciplinary forums on the latest research advances.

In a special lecture, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright addressed the many concerns expressed in the scientific community relative to the State Department. This opportunity led to a meeting later in the year between Albright and AAAS President Mary Good. Two special symposia at the Annual Meeting focused on science and technology at the State Department.

Surgeon General David Satcher delivered the meeting’s opening lecture. Attendees also heard from Mamphela Ramphele, vice chancellor of the University of Cape Town. Stephen Jay Gould’s President’s lecture attracted an audience of nearly 2,000—second only in recent years to that of President Bill Clinton. And Robert Kirshner, Harvard University, provided a clear and entertaining plenary lecture on new findings in cosmology. An opening poster session presented the work of some 130 high school science students from around the nation attending the meeting under the auspices of the American Junior Academies of Science.

More than 130 symposia and two seminars provided the core of the 2000 meeting. As is typical, these encompassed the breadth of science and engineering in what has long been the meeting’s unique interdisciplinary approach. Topical lectures were presented on a wide variety of issues. Lecturers included 3M’s William Coyne, Jaron Lanier of the Internet2 Central Laboratory, National Science Foundation Director Rita Colwell, Matthew Meselson of Harvard, Jennifer Tour Chayes of Microsoft, Carl Djerassi of Stanford, E.O. Wilson of Harvard, Senator “Kit” Bond (Missouri), William Haseltine of Human Genome Sciences, and Edelgard Bulmahn, German Minister of Science and Education. A special lecture by George Whitesides of Harvard, and Felice Frankel of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, highlighted one of the meeting’s themes of science and art. The 2000 John P. McGovern Award Lecture in the Behavioral Sciences was presented by George A. Miller of Princeton on the subject “Ambiguous Language.” The 2000 George Sarton Lecture in the History and Philosophy of Science was presented by Edward J. Larson, University of Georgia, and was entitled “75 Years Ago or Forever? The AAAS and the Scopes Trial.”

The Forum for School Science for 2000 examined the reforming of science and math education in urban schools. Special funding from the National Science Foundation enabled urban teachers, in particular from Washington, D.C., to participate. In addition, the Genome Seminar addressed the impacts and promise of genomic technologies for agriculture with presentations by leading researchers in this area. And the Nanotechnology Seminar examined several areas where this technology promises transforming innovations through the work of leading scientists and engineers in this emerging field of research.