Tracy Kidder, author of Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World, will speak at Missouri University of Science and Technology at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 23, in Leach Theatre of Castleman Hall, 10th and Main streets in Rolla, Mo. The lecture is free and open to the public. Doors open at 6 p.m.

Published in 2003, Mountains Beyond Mountains is a biographical account of physician and anthropologist Paul Farmer’s efforts to rid Haiti of tuberculosis and AIDS. Farmer is the founder of Partners in Health, a non-governmental organization that is the only health-care provider in the Plateau Central in Haiti.

Kidder earned a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award in 1982 for his book The Soul of a New Machine. Other bestselling works include House, Among Schoolchildren, Old Friends and Home Town. His writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Book Review and The New York Times OpEd page.

Mountains Beyond Mountains was selected for the university’s “One Book” program this academic year. The book is taught in all sections of English 20, the introductory composition course required of most freshmen.