11th Annual Kaczmarczik Lecture
Thursday, November 10th, 2005 - 3:30 PM
Main Auditorium, Main Building
3141 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Big Open Problems in Understanding the Universe
Frank Wilczek
Center for Theoretical Physics, MIT
2004 Nobel Laureate
In modern physics, we have learned to formulate the laws for the behavior of matter, and for the large-scale organization of matter, in terms of standard models incorporating a very few parameters. We have no compelling theory for why the values of these parameters are what they are, yet small changes in those values would appear to have catastrophic consequences for the possible emergence of complex structures and ultimately intelligent life. Recent developments in inflationary cosmology, axion physics, and string theory are bringing questions of this sort to the top of the agenda of theoretical physics. Are fundamental parameters of physics determined, in whole or in part, by selecting, among many existing candidate universes, only those that can be observed? I'll describe the crucial issues in a simple but concrete way.
Professor Frank Wilczek is considered one of the world's most eminent theoretical physicists. He is known, among other things, for the discovery of asymptotic freedom, the development of quantum chromodynamics, the invention of axions, and the discovery and exploitation of new forms of quantum statistics (anyons). When only 21 years old and a graduate student at Princeton University, in work with David Gross he defined the properties of color gluons, which hold atomic nuclei together.
Professor Wilczek received his B.S. degree from the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. from Princeton University. He taught at Princeton from 1974.81. During the period 1981.88, he was the Chancellor Robert Huttenback Professor of Physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the first permanent member of the National Science Foundation's Institute for Theoretical Physics. In the fall of 2000, he moved from the Institute for Advanced Study, where he was the J.R. Oppenheimer Professor, to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics. Since 2002, he has been an Adjunct Professor in the Centro de Estudios Cientificos of Valdivia, Chile.