The George Gamow Memorial Lectures are an annual series of lectures at the University of Colorado Boulder, named in honor of the physicist and science popularizer George Gamow, author of One Two Three... Infinity and the Mr Tompkins series. [1]
The lectures were established by Gamow's widow, Barbara Perkins Gamow, and the University's Department of Physics in 1971, to "promote public understanding of the nature and role of science." In 1975, Mrs. Gamow included in her will an endowment to maintain the lectures. The George Gamow lecturers have included 26 Nobel Laureates in the sciences. Lectures are held at the university's Macky Auditorium, and are free and open to the public. [2]
Frances Arnold, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 2018, was to lecture on “Innovation by Evolution: Bringing New Chemistry to Life” [3] but her lecture was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. [4] In 2024, the Lectures resumed with Dr. Andrea Ghez, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 2020.
George Gamow, sometimes Gammoff; born Georgiy Antonovich Gamov was a Soviet and American polymath, theoretical physicist and cosmologist. He was an early advocate and developer of Lemaître's Big Bang theory. Gamow discovered a theoretical explanation of alpha decay by quantum tunneling, invented the liquid drop model and the first mathematical model of the atomic nucleus, worked on radioactive decay, star formation, stellar nucleosynthesis, Big Bang nucleosynthesis, and molecular genetics.
Carl Edwin Wieman is an American physicist and educationist at Stanford University, and currently the A. D. White Professor at Large at Cornell University. In 1995, while at the University of Colorado Boulder, he and Eric Allin Cornell produced the first true Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) and, in 2001, they and Wolfgang Ketterle were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. Wieman currently holds a joint appointment as Professor of Physics and Professor in the Stanford Graduate School of Education, as well as the DRC Professor in the Stanford University School of Engineering. In 2020, Wieman was awarded the Yidan Prize in Education Research for "his contribution in developing new techniques and tools in STEM education".
The year 1934 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Frank Anthony Wilczek is an American theoretical physicist, mathematician and Nobel laureate. He is the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Founding Director of T. D. Lee Institute and Chief Scientist at the Wilczek Quantum Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), distinguished professor at Arizona State University (ASU) and full professor at Stockholm University.
Eric Allin Cornell is an American physicist who, along with Carl E. Wieman, was able to synthesize the first Bose–Einstein condensate in 1995. For their efforts, Cornell, Wieman, and Wolfgang Ketterle shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001.
The year 1929 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Thomas Robert Cech is an American chemist who shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Sidney Altman, for their discovery of the catalytic properties of RNA. Cech discovered that RNA could itself cut strands of RNA, suggesting that life might have started as RNA. He found that RNA can not only transmit instructions, but also that it can speed up the necessary reactions.
JILA, formerly known as the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, is a physical science research institute in the United States. JILA is located on the University of Colorado Boulder campus. JILA was founded in 1962 as a joint institute of The University of Colorado Boulder and the National Institute of Standards & Technology.
Toshihide Maskawa was a Japanese theoretical physicist known for his work on CP-violation who was awarded one quarter of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature."
David Jeffery Wineland(born February 24, 1944) is an American Nobel-laureate physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). His work has included advances in optics, specifically laser-cooling trapped ions and using ions for quantum-computing operations. He was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Serge Haroche, for "ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems".
Hugh David Politzer is an American theoretical physicist and the Richard Chace Tolman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology. He shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics with David Gross and Frank Wilczek for their discovery of asymptotic freedom in quantum chromodynamics.
Leon Pape was a medical physicist who received his BSc, MSc (1953) and PhD (1965) in Physics from the University of Southern California. He became certified in radiological physics by the American Board of Radiology and from 1955 to 1962 he worked as a radiological physicist at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles. He served at the California State University Los Angeles as radiation safety officer and as professor of physics until 1971, and worked on the development of studies in biophysics, radiological health physics, and electron microscopy. He was elevated to departmental head of physics at Cal State Los Angeles, and advocated with the California legislature to secure adequate funding for the 4-MeV Van de Graaf Laboratory, unique to CSU system. From 1971 until his death he worked at the August Krogh Institute at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, in the zoophysiological laboratory. His central research area was membrane biophysics.
The Birth and Death of the Sun is a popular science book by theoretical physicist and cosmologist George Gamow, first published in 1940, exploring atomic chemistry, stellar evolution, and cosmology. The book is illustrated by Gamow. It was revised in 1952.
Steven J. Pollock is an American professor of physics and a President's Teaching Scholar at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he has taught since 1993. His specialisations are in physics education research and in nuclear theory. He is the 2013 U.S. Professor of the Year.
Video links to past Gamow Lectures: