Renowned physicist to examine nature's moral code


Arkani-Hamed

The ideas of physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed have revolutionized the field of particle theory over the last decade. On April 21, he will turn his attention to “The Morality of Fundamental Physics” in a public lecture as an A.D. White Professor-at-Large.

The talk, at 7 p.m. in Cornell’s Schwartz Auditorium, Rockefeller Hall, is free and open to the public.

The search for nature’s fundamental laws has been associated with “morally correct” explanations and understanding, says Arkani-Hamed.

“This ‘intellectual moral code’ derives its authority from nature, reflecting a deep and still-mysterious unity in our growing understanding of the world of physical and mathematical truth. It also has striking similarities to what we widely recognize as morally good behavior more generally, providing an invariant basis for morality independent of gods or human constructs and conventions.”

His talk will illustrate this notion, using concrete examples ranging from planetary orbits to the structure of quantum field theory.

“Professor Arkani-Hamed is arguably the most brilliant theoretical physicist active today. His insights into the nature of physical laws, the structure of space-time, and the origin and history of the universe are both profound and unconventional,” says Maxim Perelstein, professor of physics. “Every time I hear him speak, I learn something remarkable.”

Yuval Grossman, professor of physics adds , “Not only are Nima’s ideas shaping the landscape of theoretical research, he also does an outstanding job of delivering those ideas to the general public.”

Arkani-Hamed is professor of natural sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. His research focuses on the relationship between theory and experiment. His groundbreaking theories relate to new extra space-time dimensions, super-symmetric extensions of the standard model, the nature of electroweak symmetry breaking and mass generation, the cosmological expansion of the universe, and the nature of dark matter in the universe and, recently, an entirely new idea about the origin of quantum mechanics.

Among his many awards, Arkani-Hamed was an inaugural winner of the $3 million Fundamental Physics Prize, the creation of physicist and internet entrepreneur Yuri Milner. He has also received a Gribov Prize from the European Physical Society and Israel’s Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009. He received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1997.

On April 18, Arkani-Hamed will offer a Physics Colloquium talk, “The Future of Collider Physics, on the Earth and in the Sky,” at 4 p.m. in Rockefeller Hall, Schwartz Auditorium.

Arkani-Hamed’s talks are sponsored by the Department of Physics and the A.D. White Professors-at-Large Program.

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Melissa Osgood