Beckman Center Will Be Dedicated Saturday

The newly constructed West Coast headquarters of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering will be dedicated at 11 a.m. Saturday.

The 48,000-square-foot facility, which will provide space for national scientific conferences, has been named the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center in honor of the founding chairman of Beckman Instruments and his wife, who, through a foundation, have given $20 million to finance the project.

The center is at the corner of California Avenue and University Drive, next to the UC Irvine campus, on seven acres donated by the Irvine Co.

Four inaugural symposiums are scheduled at the Beckman Center: “Energy Issues for the 1990s,” May 11-12; “Biological Research and Human Values,” May 23-24; “Mathematics Education: Wellspring of U.S. Industrial Strength,” sometime in the fall, and “The Technology and Economy of the Pacific Rim Countries,” in early 1989.

A lecture on “Providing Universal and Affordable Health Care to the American People” is scheduled for January of next year.