These lectures were hugely popular last year. Harvards has even lined up corporate sponsors. Here’s a link to the F11 schedule. Arrive early.

Here’s one from last year.

The kickoff event on Tuesday, Sept. 6, features Dave Arnold (Food Arts magazine’s Contributing Editor for Equipment and Food Science), Harold McGee (author of On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen and columnist for The New York Times), and David Weitz (Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics at Harvard and co-creator of the course).

This from a Globe food section story on last fall’s series where “13 of the world’s most accomplished chefs made a pilgrimage to the university to hold forth on how the newest food science informs their creations. It was a dream team of speakers from this country and Europe: chefs David Chang, Dan Barber, Jose Andres, Wylie Dufresne; White House pastry chef Bill Yosses; visiting Catalan chef Ferran Adria, and several of his colleagues.”

The result is mountains of content and commentary on our understanding of exotic haute-cuisine dishes, which include pearls (the method is called spherification) and traditional browned meat (the “Maillard reaction’’). To date, the talks have been written about on more than 3,000 blogs. And the science is no longer esoterica. Working chefs, taking a rare night off, were also in the auditorium taking notes.

Initially the series had few believers, but one visionary. Meet Otger Campas, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He studies the properties of biological physics and “soft matter,‘’ and is a bit of an amateur cook. Soft matter, he tells me, includes shampoo, the human body, kid’s squishy toys, and, as it turns out, nearly all food. Campas’s first name, pronounced “oo-tjer,’’ has become a shibboleth of sorts in some Boston food circles.

This from another Globe story about a related class for Harvard students:

“It’s very satisfying from an educational perspective,‘’ says Amy Rowat, a physics research associate and class instructor. “These students are seeing, ’Hey, that’s how you make cheese,’ or ’That’s where a gummy drop comes from,’ and understanding terms on food labels.’’

In January, Rowat will begin as an assistant professor at UCLA. Harvard’s course will provide the basis for one she will teach there.

Andres is not surprised that the class is spreading.

“Food is a universal language, and we need to celebrate and understand it,‘’ he says by phone. “To be talking at Harvard about food and science sends the message that food is becoming a more important topic in our world than just fancy dinners under candlelight with a bottle of wine. It is becoming a powerful tool to shape the world.’’