Two Nobel Prize-winning professors will make presentations this month to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the university's Academy of Scholars.

A lecture by Nigerian poet and dramatist Wole Soyinka will run from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Monday, Sept. 20, in the Bernath Auditorium of the David Adamany Undergraduate Library. He will discuss "Exile: Thresholds of Loss and Identity."

Soyinka, a former political prisoner who was jailed for 22 months between 1967 and 1969 and kept in solitary confinement, is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts at Emory University. He previously held positions at Yale, Cornell, Cambridge and Harvard universities and won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1986.

Numerous critics consider Soyinka Africa's finest writer. He blends traditional Yoruban folk drama with European dramatic form and has chronicled Africa's struggle to reconcile tradition with modernization.

Dr. Ferid Murad, director of the Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Texas-Houston, will speak from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 21 in the Blue Auditorium of Scott Hall.

Murad, who received the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1998, will discuss "Cellular Signaling with Nitric Oxide and Cyclic GMP." He received the Nobel Prize for demonstrating the basic mechanisms of how nitric oxide affects dilatation of arterioles and endothelium functions.

Murad served on the staff of several universities including the University of Virginia, Stanford and Northwestern before moving to the University of Texas-Houston's medical school in 1997.

Both lectures are free and open to the public, as are receptions that will follow the talks. For more information call Sally Bates at (313) 577-7930.

The Academy of Scholars recognizes outstanding excellence in scholarship and creative achievement of faculty members at WSU. Appointment to the academy is the highest recognition that can be bestowed upon faculty members by their colleagues and is for the lifetime of the scholar.

Photos are available at WSU Office of Public Relations Web site.