From the Adinkras of Supersymmetry to the Music of Arnold Schoenberg

Speaker: Jim Gates

Date: Thu, May 29, 2014

Location: PIMS, University of British Columbia

Conference: PIMS Public Seminar, PIMS Undergraduate Workshop on Supersymmetry

Subject: Mathematics, Mathematical Physics, Particle Physics and Quantum Field Theory, Physics

Class: Scientific

Abstract:

The concept of supersymmetry, though never observed in Nature, has been one of the primary drivers of investigations in theoretical physics for several decades. Through all of this time, there have remained questions that are unsolved. This presentation will describe how looking at such questions one can be led to the 'Dodecaphony Technique'  of Austrian composer Schoenberg.

 

Jim Gates is a theoretical physicist known for work on supersymmetry, supergravity and superstring theory. He is currently a Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, College Park, a University of Maryland Regents Professor and serves on President Barack Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Gates was nominated by the US Department of Energy to present his work and career to middle and high school students in October 2010. He is on the board of trustees of Society for Science & the Public, he was a Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Scholar at MIT (2010-11) and was a Residential Scholar at MIT’s Simmons Hall. On February 1, 2013, Gates received the National Medal of Science.