Nathan Seiberg To Speak On High Energy Physics And The Large Hadron Collider

Nathan Seiberg, a leading physicst, will present the lecture “The World’s Largest Experiment”on Wednesday, October 4, at 4:30 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall on the campus of the Institute for Advanced Study. Dr. Seiberg is a Professor in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator which is expected to begin operating in 2007, will probe deeper into the structure of matter than ever before. The world’s largest experiment, the LHC will usher the field of high energy physics into a new era. The LHC is located at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, on the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. It was built in collaboration with thousands of physicists representing more than 80 nationalities.

In his lecture, Professor Seiberg will discuss how the LHC will allow for exploration of the laws of physics at shorter distances and at higher energies than before. He will also examine how it may provide further information about the standard model of particle physics, which describes the elementary particles and the forces acting between them.

According to Professor Seiberg, among the discoveries the LHC may yield are new insights into the origin of mass, the physics of our early universe, new symmetries of nature and extra space dimensions.

Professor Seiberg received his B.Sc. with High Distinction from Tel-Aviv University in 1977. After serving in the military, he obtained a Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel in 1982. He was a Member at the Institute for Advanced Study from 1982 to 1984, and he then joined the Weizmann Institute as a Senior Scientist from 1985 to 1986 and then served as an associate professor from 1986 to 1989. He joined the faculty of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in 1989, and he remained there until 1997, when he was appointed to the Faculty at the Institute.

Professor Seiberg is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Over the years, he has received many distinctions for his work, including the prestigious Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics, awarded by the American Physical Society in 1998. He is also the recipient of the Israeli Physical Society Prize (1976), the Mifal Hapais Prize (1979), the Michael Landau Prize (1981), the John F. Kennedy Prize (1982), the Oskar Klein Medal (1995) and the New Jersey Pride Award (1996). In 2002, Professor Seiberg delivered the Wolfgang Pauli Lecture at ETH in Switzerland.

For further information about this event, which is free and open to the public, please call (609) 734-8175.