The Dr. Benjamin T. Chu Distinguished Lecture celebrates the meeting of faith and reason at Catholic institutions, as well as the major contribution that Norbertines have made through history to the sciences.

The lecture invites scholars who not only have distinguished themselves in the physical sciences but who also have demonstrated that faith plays a significant role in their work and/or personal life.

Dr. Benjamin Chu is a 1955 graduate and past trustee of St. Norbert College. One of the college’s earliest Asian students, he was born in China in 1932 and was steered to SNC by Irish Jesuits who ran a high school in Hong Kong. He would go on to a distinguished career as a chemist, researcher and entrepreneur at SUNY-Stony Brook.

While pursuing his graduate and postdoctoral work at Cornell University, Chu studied under the acclaimed physicist and physical chemist Dr. Peter J.W. Debye, winner of the 1936 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Debye would prove to be a major and lasting influence on countless students, including Ben.