Past Hamilton Lecture Speakers

Donald Ross Hamilton Memorial Lecture Series

1st

October 12, 1972 Victor Weisskopf
"The Role of Science in Today's Culture"

2nd

November 1, 1973 Harvey Brooks
"Are Scientists Obsolete?"

3rd

March 20, 1975 Rudolph Peierls
"Recollections of the Early Days of Quantum Mechanics"

4th

March 17, 1976 Sheldon Glashow
"Quarks: Are They the Ultimate Constituents of Matter?"

5th

March 2, 1977 Frank Press
"The Science and Politics of Earthquake Predictions"

6th

April 12, 1978 W.H.K. Panofsky
"The New Spectroscopy"

7th

April 10, 1979 I.I. Rabi
"Science at the Crossroads"

8th

April 22, 1981 Luis Alvarez
"Asteroids and Dinosaurs"

9th

April 29, 1982 Lyman Spitzer
"Space Telescope, Eye on the Universe"

10th

May 9, 1983 Carlo Rubbia
"Searching for the Carrier of the Weak Force"

11th

May 10, 1984 John J. Hopfield
"The Physics of Biological Memory"

12th

April 30, 1985 Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
"Gravitational Collapse and the Problem of Singularities in General Relativity"

13th

April 22, 1986 Robert H. Dicke
"Experimental Physics is Fun: Recollections"

14th

April 28, 1987 Sidney D. Drell
"Arms Control & Star Wars"

15th

April 12, 1988 Frank Wilczek
"Scale Invariance: It's Not How Big You Are But How Fast You Reproduce Yourself"

16th

April 25, 1989 Martin L. Perl
"Electron, Muon, and Tau: Diversity in Discovery"

17th

March 9, 1990 Michael E. Fisher
"Universality and Singularity: Phase Transitions and our Understanding of the Physical World"

18th

April 2, 1991 Norman Ramsey
"Time and the Physical Universe"

19th

March 10, 1992 Abraham Pais
"American Science & World War II"

20th

March 30, 1993 Steven M. Girvin
"The Quantum Hall Effect: Universal Physics from Dirty Devices."

21st

May 11, 1995 Philippe Nozières
"Is Many Body Physics a Settled Issue?"

22nd

April 19, 1996 Daniel Kleppner
"Views from a Garden of Worldly Delights"

23rd

December 9, 1997 Jocelyn Bell Burnell
“In Pursuit of Pulsars – 30 Years On!”

24th

May 5, 1999 Sir Martin Rees
“Understanding the Beginning and the End: Our Universe and Others”

25th

March 2, 2000 Charles H. Townes
“The Sociology of Science Illustrated by the Laser”

26th

April 16, 2001 Gerard ‘t Hooft
“Quantum Field Theory, the Gravitational Force, and the Future of Quantum Mechanics”

27th

March 14, 2002 Dava Sobel
“Galileo: Working Scientist”

28th

April 22, 2003 Lawrence Krauss
“Einstein’s Biggest Blunder: A Cosmic Mystery Story”

29th

April 26, 2004 Herman Wouk
“A Hole in Texas” A Novel view of the Supercollider

30th

April 29, 2005 David J. Gross
“The Future of Physics”

31st

March 30, 2006 Steven Chu
“The energy problem: Our current choices and future hopes”

32nd

April 12, 2007   N. David Mermin
“Spooky Actions at a Distance?”

33rd

March 27, 2008   Arthur B. McDonald
“A Deeper Understanding of the Universe from 2km Underground”

34th

April 7, 2009 Larry Abbott
“Sense from Chaos: Phase Transitions in Neural Activity”

35th

April 8, 2010 Sir John Pendry
“A Cloak of Invisibility: Harry Potter does Electromagnetism.”

36th

February 2, 2011 Sir Michael Berry
“Making Light of Mathematics”

37th

February 9, 2012 Leo Kadanoff
“Making a Splash, Breaking a Neck”

38th

April 25, 2013 Joe Incandela
“The Search for the Higgs Boson:Discovery at the LHC”

39th

April 3, 2014 Prof. Samuel Ting
“The Latest Results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station”

40th

April 30, 2015 Deborah Jin, JILA, University of Colorado
"Fun with Ultracold Atoms"

41st

April 7, 2016 Gary Horowitz, UC Santa Barbara
"Strange Views of Space and Time: From Einstein to String Theory"

42nd

May 4, 2017 Charles Kane, University of Pennsylvania
"Topological Phases of Matter: Matter Can Arrange Itself in the Most Ingenious Ways" (Video)

43rd

April 12, 2018 Kip Thorne
"Exploring the Universe with Gravitational Waves: From the Big Bang to Black Holes and Colliding Stars"

44th

April 22, 2019 Elena Aprile
"The Xenon Project: At the Forefront of Dark Matter Direct Detection"

45th

April 21, 2022 Steven M. Girvin
"Progress and Prospects for the Second Quantum Revolution"

46th

April 20, 2023 Sylvester James Gate
"SUSY: Fifty Years of Scientific Odyssey Inspiring a Personal Quest"