This fall, MIT anthropologist Stefan Helmreich gave the prestigious Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture at the University of Rochester. Helmreich, whose 2009 award-winning book Alien Ocean describes marine biologists studying deep-sea microbes, spoke about waves—in the water and elsewhere—and how scientists and others use the notion of a “wave” to describe many disparate phenomena.

“How do cardiologists tracking waves of electrical potential in the heart draw inspiration from research in physics? How has the image of the wave migrated into social theory, making it possible to speak of waves of opinion, of revolution, of immigration, of innovation? The cultural work of analogy in the sciences — natural and social both — fascinates me,” Helmreich told the MIT News last week.

Explore Professor Helmreich’s research in the Open Access Articles collection in DSpace@MIT, where it is openly accessible to the world.

Since the MIT faculty established their Open Access Policy in March 2009 they have made thousands of research papers freely available to the world via DSpace@MIT. To highlight that research, we’re offering a series of blog posts that link news stories about scholars’ work to their open access papers in DSpace.