Alan H. Guth, the Victor F. Weisskopf Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will be the Hans A. Bethe Lecturer at Cornell. Guth will give a free, public lecture, "The Inflationary Universe," on Wednesday, March 4, at 8 p.m. He also will present two physics colloquia: "Inflationary Cosmology: A Progress Report," on Monday, March 2, at 4:30 p.m., and "Eternal Inflation: Could Our Universe Be One of an Infinitude?" on Monday, March 23, at 4:30 p.m. The lecture and the colloquia will be in Schwartz Auditorium, Rockefeller Hall.

Guth is a distinguished cosmologist and particle physicist. He is the inventor of a theory of cosmic evolution called the inflationary universe, which has received international scientific attention and awards.

While a research associate at Cornell from 1977 to 1979, Guth and his colleague Henry Tye, now a Cornell professor of physics, found that accepted assumptions in particle physics and cosmology must be flawed because they would lead to a huge overproduction of particles called magnetic monopoles. These particles are theorized to exist but have never been observed.

Searching for alternatives, Guth invented the theory of the inflationary universe, which describes the conditions necessary for the big bang, the theory that the universe began with the explosion of a superdense primeval atom and has been expanding ever since.

The inflationary universe explains many puzzling features of the observed universe and also offers a possible explanation for the origin of essentially all of its matter and energy. Recently Guth finished work on a book aimed at a general audience, The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins.

The Bethe Lecture Series, established by the physics department and the College of Arts and Sciences, honors Hans A. Bethe, Cornell professor emeritus of physics, whose description of the nuclear processes powering the sun won him a Nobel Prize in physics in 1967. The lectures have been given annually since 1977.