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CORVALLIS - Leon Lederman, a scientist, educator and winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics, will lecture on "Science Literacy: Strategies for Survival" on Wednesday, April 17, at Oregon State University.

His free, public lecture will begin at 8 p.m. in LaSells Stewart Center. Lederman's appearance is sponsored by OSU's Convocations and Lectures Committee.

Lederman has been an outspoken advocate of educational reform in the United States and of rethinking the ways math and science are taught. He has worked with the Chicago school system to enact sweeping changes that ensure schools are more responsive to family and student needs.

He helped establish the Illinois Science and Math Academy, a free public boarding school founded to nurture the minds of promising students and prepare them to compete in a technology- driven world. In addition, he has developed innovative programs that retrain teachers and modernize their teaching methods.

Lederman served as the director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory from 1979 to 1989 and he currently is the Pritzer Professor of Science at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He co- chairs the Teachers Academy for Mathematics and Science in Chicago.

In addition to the Nobel Prize, he has received the 1992 Enrico Fermi Award, the 1982 Wolf Prize in Physics and the 1965 National Medal in Science. His best selling book, "The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question?" written in 1993 with Richard Teresi, describes the search for the basic building block of all matter.