Max Essex, renowned scientist and Mary Woodard Lasker Professor of Health Sciences at Harvard University, will be a guest speaker at the History Department’s 12th annual W. Bruce Lincoln Lecture.

The event, which will take place at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 1 in the Altgeld Hall Auditorium, is the department’s leading academic event, said History Department chair Jim Schmidt, according to a History Department news release. Essex’s talk is titled “The Pandemic of HIV/AIDS: Fear and Denial Followed by Progress in Health and Human Rights.”

Essex is one of the world’s prime HIV and AIDS researchers and chairs on both the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Aids Initiative and the Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership, according to the NIU History Department. He also discovered the HIV-2 virus.

Contact Jim Schmidt at 815-753-6810 or go to www.niu.edu/history for more information about the event.