[PLUG-TALK] Fwd: Gurevitch Lecture June 1 @515pm

Bill Barry barryb at proaxis.com
Fri Jun 1 17:14:46 UTC 2012


Some of you might be interested in this talk at Portland State this
afternoon.

http://pdx.edu/physics/mark-gurevitch-memorial-lecture-series


 *Gurevitch Lecture, Friday June 1, 17:15-18:15, in SB1 107*

*The maggot in the apple: peaceful coexistence of incompatible theories
Sir Michael Berry, Physics Department, Bristol University*

In physics, as in science generally, most phenomena can be understood in
more than one way: the gas in an engine obeys the laws of thermodynamics
and also those of the motion of its molecules. The different theories
correspond to different levels of description. These must overlap, but
understanding their consilience is far from straightforward because they
are usually based on seemingly incompatible concepts. The discordance
arises from the fact, unappreciated until recently, that the limit in which
the more general theory reduces to the less general (usually older) theory
is mathematically singular. One consequence is a range of phenomena, of
intense current interest, inhabiting the borderlands between the theories.
I will explore this theme with examples from the physics of fluids, light
and the quantum world.


**

Professor Sir Michael Berry
Melville Wills Professor of Physics at Bristol University (UK)

Michael Berry studies the borderlands between the physical theories of rays
and waves or between classical and quantum mechanics.  This is the domain
of asymptotics, and Berry combines that with an emphasis on geometrical
aspects of waves (especially phase) and chaos.  He is famous among other
things for the Berry phase, a holonomy angle in the context of wave
mechanics, and has made many profound contributions to quantum mechanics
and optics.

He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1982 and knighted
in 1996.  He has received dozens of awards and prizes; among these are the
Wolf Prize for Physics (1998), the Kapitsa Medal of the Russian Academy of
Sciences (1997), and the Polya Prize of the London Mathematical Society
(2005).  In addition to these, he holds 10 honorary doctorates.  In 1994
Berry was awarded the Louis-Vuitton Moet-Hennessy ‘Science for Art’ prize,
and in 2000 he won an Ig Nobel with Andre Geim for the physics of flying
frogs.

*Reception following lecture in 107 SB1*.

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