KU News Release

Physicist who won Nobel Prize in 1979 to speak at KU

Sheldon Glashow

LAWRENCE — One of the most highly regarded physicists in the world will speak at the University of Kansas next week.

Nobel Prize winner Sheldon Glashow will speak at 6:30 p.m. Friday, March 9, at the Spencer Museum of Art auditorium. A standing room only crowd is expected for the lecture, titled “Does Science Progress through Blind Chance or Intelligent Design?” It is open to the public.

“Glashow is a genius who succeeded in partially fulfilling Einstein’s dream of unifying the fundamental forces,” said Danny Marfatia, assistant professor of physics.

The 1979 Nobel Prize was shared by Glashow with two other physicists, Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam. They discovered new facts on the unification of forces. Since the research was conducted, physicists throughout the world have verified it.

Glashow’s work has led to the prediction of neutral currents, charmed particles and intermediate vector bosons, all of which were subsequently discovered by experiments.

The work set off an experimental effort that continues to this day that involves KU physicists working at labs in Chicago, Long Island and Geneva. The discovery of heavy light not only linked two of the fundamental forces but also particle physics and astronomy.

Glashow knew Weinberg long before they won the Nobel Prize in 1979. They graduated together from the Bronx High School of Science in 1950 and from Cornell University in 1954.

From there, Glashow went on to receive his doctorate from Harvard in 1958. He currently is a professor at Boston University. Over the course of his career, Glashow has authored more than 300 research papers and has published three books. He has done research in elementary particle physics and cosmology.

The lecture is sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

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