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| The president of the
American Physical Society came to Penn State
September 16 to deliver the 2005 Nelson W. Taylor
Lecture, sponsored by the Materials Science and
Engineering Department in the College of Earth
and Mineral Sciences. Marvin
L. Cohen, University Professor
in the Department of Physics at the University
of California, Berkeley, entertained and enlightened
a crowded Hub-Robeson Center auditorium with
his reflections on Einstein, quantum physics,
and nanoscience.
As Gary
Messing, Distinguished
Professor of Materials Science and Engineering,
noted in his introduction, Prof. Cohen
serves as president of the American Physical
Society at a particularly important period,
as this is the WYP 2005, the World Year
of Physics, a worldwide yearlong celebration
of the role of physics in our daily lives.
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Marvin L. Cohen |
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Long-Qing
Chen
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Commemorating the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s
Annus Mirabilis, the miraculous year when the
26-year-old Einstein published four ground breaking
papers, including works on Brownian motion and
the Special Theory of Relativity, the World Year
of Physics through lecture programs and special
projects makes the public aware of the continuing
importance of Einstein’s contributions
and the central role of physics in the 21st century. |
| “ Physicists
should never admit their mistakes,” Prof.
Cohen joked. With the discovery that the universe
is expanding more rapidly than predicted, Einstein’s
gravitational constant, which he himself admitted
was his biggest error, has had to be added back
into the equations. If he hadn’t admitted
he was wrong, says Prof Cohen, “Einstein
could have been famous.” |
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Prof.
Cohen commended the important work being done
on the Penn State campus, naming a number of
researchers by name, and especially singling
out the three speakers who preceded him on the
program: Long-Qing
Chen, professor of Materials
Science and Engineering, who spoke on computational
materials science at the mesoscale; Kristen
Fichthorn, professor of chemical
engineering and professor of physics, who described
unexpected structures that self assemble on thin
film layered on various substrates; and Vincent
Crespi, professor of physics
and materials science and engineering, who, in
honor of the kinds of crucial and innovative
questions that Prof. Cohen likes to posit, discussed
the possibility of making electrons behave in
the same bound manner as biological particles.
All three distinguished speakers are part of
Penn State’s Materials Research Institute.
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Kristen Fichthorn |
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Vincent Crespi |
Recalling an anecdote
of the late Nobel laureate Richard Feynman,
Prof. Cohen told the audience that if all the
physicists and all the great discoveries of
physics were to disappear except for one idea,
it should be that “matter is made up
of atoms.” Everything else follows from
that.
By: Walt Mills
wem12@psu.edu |
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FRONT: Kristen Fichthorn, Marvin L. Cohen, Gary
L. Messing
BACK: Long-Qing Chen, Vincent Crespi
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