Oxford Physicist Roger Penrose to Speak at Brookhaven Lab, Feb. 6
January 18, 2007
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Roger Penrose (Image courtesy of Jerry Bauer, click on image to download high-resolution version)
UPTON, NY - Mathematical physicist Roger Penrose of the University of Oxford, England, will give a BSA Distinguished Lecture titled "Before the Big Bang? A Novel Resolution of a Profound Cosmological Puzzle" at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory on Tuesday, February 6, at 4 p.m in Berkner Hall. BSA Distinguished Lectures are sponsored by Brookhaven Science Associates, the company that manages Brookhaven Lab, to bring topics of general interest before the Laboratory community and the public. The lecture is free, and no reservations are required. All visitors to the Laboratory age 16 and over must bring a photo ID.
The second law of thermodynamics says, in effect, that things get more random as time progresses. Thus, we can deduce that the beginning of the universe - the Big Bang - must have been an extraordinarily precisely organized state. What was the nature of this state? How can such a special state have come about? In Penrose's talk, a novel explanation is suggested, which involves an examination of what is to be expected in the remote future of the universe, with its observed accelerated expansion. It also has some curious implications with regard to particle physics.
Currently Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College, Roger Penrose is well known for his significant contributions to mathematical physics, especially his insights concerning general relativity and cosmology.
After earning a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Cambridge in 1957, Penrose was appointed a Research Fellow at St. John's College, Cambridge. He then spent 1959-1961 in the U.S., first at Princeton and later at Syracuse University, under a NATO Research Fellowship. After his return to England, Penrose was a research associate at King's College, London, before returning to the U.S. to spend 1963-1964 as a visiting associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He then joined the faculty of Birkbeck College, London, where he eventually became Professor of Applied Mathematics. In 1973, he was appointed Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, earning the status Emeritus with that title in 1998. In that year, he was also appointed Gresham Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, London.
Penrose has been awarded numerous honors for his scientific contributions. In 1975, Penrose and Stephen Hawking were jointly awarded the Eddington Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, and, in 1988, along with Stephen Hawking, he was awarded the Wolf Prize in Physics for their development of the theory of general relativity. In 1985, Penrose received the Royal Society's Royal Medal, and, in 1989, he was honored with the Dirac Medal and Prize of the British Institute of Physics. In 1990, he was awarded the Albert Einstein Medal, and in 1991, the Naylor Prize of the London Mathematical Society. He received the DeMorgan Medal for his wide and original contributions to mathematical physics in 2004.
A Fellow of the Royal Society of London since 1972, Penrose was elected Foreign Associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2004. He was knighted for his services to science in 1994.
Penrose is the author of eight books, ranging from Techniques of Differential Topology in Relativity, published in 1972, to his most recent well-reviewed book, titled, The Road To Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe, a mathematical explanation of the universe, published in 2004.
Call 631 344-2345 for more information. The Laboratory is located on William Floyd Parkway (County Road 46), one-and-a-half miles north of Exit 68 of the Long Island Expressway.
2007-10580 | INT/EXT | Newsroom
