Delmos Jones Lecture

Thursday, April 4, 6 pm
Elebash Recital Hall
Free

There are some questions in physics that until recently could not be answered due to the lack of a complete theory of gravitation. Some of these were, ``How does the force of gravity act on objects a billion billions times smaller than the hydrogen atom?'' or ``What was the universe like, the very instant after the BIG BANG?'' or ``What is the complete physics of Black Holes?'' For such questions it is critical to know how the force of gravity can be consistent with the principles of quantum theory. In such a realm, the effects of gravity and all the other forces must be very different from those seen in everyday experience. Einstein suspected this and it led him to the belief that there must exist a ``unified field theory'' to describe our world. He spent the last forty years of his life unsuccessfully searching for this construction. More recently there appeared new mathematical models called ``superstring theory'' that have apparently completed this quest begun by Einstein. This talk is an accessible introduction for a general audience to the idea of superstrings and its latest frontier, ``M-theory.''

Professor Gates is a prominent scholar in theoretical physics, an educator and an entrepreneurial leader. His important research is in an area called string or superstring theory, also known as the Theory of Everything. This theory uses complex mathematical descriptions to explain how gravity and other natural forces are connected and it may one day allow scientists to understand a unified theory of all forces. He is the author of Superspace, or One Thousand and One Lessons in Supersymmetry (1983) and well over one hundred research papers in scientific journals such as Nuclear Physics and Physics Letters. He has been honored in numerous ways for his achievements. He is a member, charter fellow and past president of the National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP) and in 1994 won a prestigious Bouchet award from the American Physical Society. He has advised the National Science Foundation, U. S. Departments of Energy and Defense, the Educational Testing Service, and Time Life Books. He was the scientific commentator for a White House/C-SPAN/BBC Internet broadcast with British physicist Stephen Hawking, and has been featured in at least two PBS series."