Quantum Information and Condensed Matter Physics
In Praise of Science: Public Lecture by Sander Bais
This is to announce the following event, which should be of interest to scientists and non-scientists alike.
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Title: In Praise of Science: Curiosity, Understanding and
Progress
Speaker: Prof. Sander Bais (University of Amsterdam/Santa Fe Institute)
Place: Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson Street, Dublin 2 (map)
Time: Wednesday, September 7, 18:30 (this Wednesday)
A poster for the event is available here.
Sander Bais has been a full professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Amsterdam since 1985. His research has covered a wide range of topics in particle physics, field theory, relativity and string theory and more recently topological interactions and phases, and their applications to quantum computation.
He was a longtime director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of Amsterdam, Dutch delegate in the CERN Council and Chairman of the Council for Physics and Astrophysics of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences.
Prof. Bais has written a number of very successful popular books, which have been translated into over a dozen languages, and was recently elected University of Amsterdam Lecturer of the Year for 2010.
The jury, which consisted of students at the University, said the
following:
"...An artist in the guise of a scientist. He manages to connect the
Arts, social sciences and sciences, to shed light on various aspects
of the natural sciences and to combine knowledge from different
disciplines...
He builds bridges between different scientific disciplines and does
not lose sight of the link between culture, society and science..."
Praise for Prof. Bais book "In Praise of Science", on which the lecture will be based includes,
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from "New Scientist":
"Ultimately this is a treatise on the unity of knowledge, on the one science that is slowly taking shape through the work of thousands of scientists spread over the earth in time. It is like putting a gigantic jigsaw puzzle together...until every piece falls in its place and we get a grand view of the whole" -
from "Nature":
"In his neatly packaged paean to science, physicist Sander Bais calls on researchers to be vocal in defending the scientific method in an age of voluble but often unsupported public opinion."
If you have queries, please contact the local organizers directly
We hope some of you will be able to join us on Wednesday.