News & Events
STARLAB and HEPL/KIPAC Seminar
Wednesday, March 14, 2007 4:00pm
Location: Applied Physics 200
Professor C.W. Francis Everitt
W.W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory, Stanford University
“Maxwell at 175 ”
James Clerk Maxwell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 13 June 1831. His dual last name has both social and intellectual importance, reflecting his double descent from two very different, leading Scottish families: the Clerks from near Edinburgh who go back to the 16th century and the Maxwells from the southwest border country who go back to the 12th.
When Einstein visited Cambridge in the 1920s, someone said to him “You stand on Newton’s shoulders.” His answer was “No, I stand on Maxwell’s shoulders.” This statement about relativity is correct; a similar one could also be correctly put for the background to quantum mechanics. These are the measures of Maxwell’s intellectual greatness, the more impressive because he was cut off in 1879 at the age of 48.
This talk aims at three things. First, to describe some of Maxwell’s achievements, both well-known (kinetic theory and the electromagnetic theory of light) and less well-known (the first color photograph and first paper on control theory). Second, to give a picture of Maxwell’s intriguing dual education at Edinburgh and Cambridge, two very different universities with different philosophies of education. And third, to give some impressions of Maxwell’s thoughts beyond physics, which may be instructive even to us in a world very different from his.
Professor Francis Everitt is the Principal Investigator of the NASA Gravity Probe B (GP-B) and Satellite Test of the Equivalence Principle (STEP) missions, both related to fundamental physics in space. In addition, he has a strong interest in the history and philosophy of physics and has written a biography of Maxwell, James Clerk Maxwell, Physicist and Natural Philosopher, and several other works on 19th and 20th century physics. He has been at Stanford for 38.8% of the history of the University.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007 4:00pm
Location: Applied Physics 200
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Previous HEPL Seminars 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007:
Paul Brink
Department of Physics, Stanford University speaking for the (Super)CDMS collaboration
“Present status and future plans of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS)”
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Alfred Vogel
Institute of Biomedical Optics University of Lübeck, Germany
“New findings on plasma and cavity generation in aqueous media with fs and ns laser pulses, and their applications in cell surgery"
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Dr. Dan McCleese
Chief Scientist, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
“Recent Results and Future Direction of the Exploration of Mars"
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Ned Wright
Professor of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA
What's New in Cosmology?
Thursday 9 March 2006
Peter Michelson
Stanford University
GLAST: The Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope Mission
Seminar and Tour
Thursday 16 Feb 2006
Robert L. Byer
Stanford University
"Acceleration of Electrons with Visible Light"
Wednesday 1 Feb 2006
Dr. Nicholas White
Chief,
Laboratory for High Astrophysics NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
“The NASA Beyond Einstein Program”
Wed 5 Oct 2005
Ulrich Schreiber, Forschungseinrichtung Satellitengeodäsie, TU-München
“High Precision Sagnac Interferometry for Applications in Geoscience ”
Thursday, September 8, 2005
Christopher D. Bass,
Indiana University / IUCF, “Measurement of the Parity-Odd Neutron Spin Rotation in Liquid-4He”
Monday, August 22, 2005
Anne Kinney, Director, Universe Division in the Science Mission Directorate, NASA, "Blue Planets, Black Holes"
Wednesday, 20 July 2005
Dr William Tobin, Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Canterbury, New Zealand, "Foucault's Gyroscope of 1852"
Friday, 8 April 2005
Rex Geveden, NASA Chief Engineer, Independent Technical Authority
7 April 2005
Shooting the Moon: Probing Fundamental Gravity in the Solar System
Tom Murphy,
UC San Diego 3 March 2005
The GRACE Mission: Status and Science Results John Ries, Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Space Research at The University of Texas at Austin, 14 February 2005.
Hubble Robotic Servicing - Recent Engineering Development, Bill Reeve
Civil Space Director of Advanced Science Programs,
Lockheed Martin, 26 January 2005.
Interferometry for LISA, Daniel Shaddock, PhD, Interferometry Metrology and Optics Group, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 17 November 2004.
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), Steve Kahn, Deputy Director, Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, 27 October 2004.
HEPL-KIPAC Showcase. 29 September 2004. Agenda