Physics
Distinguished lecture series in Physics
The 2024 Distinguished Lecture Series in Physics
October 3-4, 2024
The UW-La Crosse Distinguished Lecture Series in Physics (DLS) is co-sponsored by the UW-La Crosse Foundation, the Department of Physics, and the College of Science and Health. The purpose of the series is to bring to La Crosse each year a world-renowned physicist whose significant accomplishments can inspire and enrich the lives and careers of students, faculty, and the community in general.
Dates:
Thursday, October 3 and Friday, October 4, 2024
Speaker:
James Peebles, 2019 Nobel Laureate in Physics
© Nobel Media. Photo: A. Mahmoud
2019 Nobel Laureate "for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology"
Albert Einstein Professor of Science, Princeton University
Professor Emeritus
Phillip James Peebles CC OM FRS is a Canadian-American astrophysicist, astronomer, and theoretical cosmologist who is currently the Albert Einstein Professor in Science, emeritus, at Princeton University. He is widely regarded as one of the world's leading theoretical cosmologists in the period since 1970, with major theoretical contributions to primordial nucleosynthesis, dark matter, the cosmic microwave background, and structure formation. Peebles was awarded half of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2019 for his theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology.
Peebles completed his bachelor of science degree at the University of Manitoba. He then went on to pursue graduate studies at Princeton University, where he received his PhD in physics, completing a doctoral dissertation titled "Observational Tests and Theoretical Problems Relating to the Conjecture That the Strength of the Electromagnetic Interaction May Be Variable" under the supervision of Robert Dicke. He has remained at Princeton for his whole career. His many awards include the Eddington Medal (1981), Fellow of the Royal Society (1982), Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1998), Gruber Prize in Cosmology (2000), with Allan Sandage, Nobel Prize in Physics (2019), and the Order of Canada (2020).
Thursday, October 3
5:00 p.m.
Public Lecture
Location: Centennial Hall - Skogen Auditorium A, Room 1400
Topic: The Universe is Expanding
Dr. Peebles will explain what the expansion of the universe means, how people hit on the idea, and the evidence in support of it. Open questions remain. There are ideas about what the universe was doing before it was expanding, and what it will be doing in the far future, but we do not have well-tested answers. This is the nature of natural science: we make great progress in some directions, but we have no final answers because we are limited by the inevitable limits of the evidence.
Friday, October 4
3:20 p.m.
Physics Seminar (open to the public)
Location: Centennial Hall - Skogen Auditorium A, Room 1400
Topic: The Physicists' Philosophy of Physics
Physicists follow operating procedures that have been close enough to standard for long enough to constitute the physicists' philosophy of physics. Dr. Peebles will offer a short statement of this philosophy, present examples of what he means by it, and discuss what philosophers and sociologists see us doing.