UC Berkeley Web Feature
New Nobelists to visit campus this week
BERKELEY – Two winners of the 2005 Nobel Prize in physics — Theodor Haensch and Roy Glauber — will speak this Friday at "Amazing Light: Visions for Discovery," an international symposium being held on campus Oct. 6-8. Fourteen other Nobelists also are scheduled to participate in this gathering of some of the greatest minds in physics and cosmology.
 Roy Glauber |
 Theodor Haensch |
The symposium honors UC Berkeley physicist Charles Townes, 90, who received the Nobel Prize in 1964 for his work leading to the invention of the laser. It also celebrates the "amazing laser" itself, the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's "miracle year," and the U.N.-designated World Year of Physics.
Haensch and Glauber, who share the just-announced prize with John L. Hall, originally were scheduled to participate in the event as top physicists — now they're Nobelists as well. Haensch, of the Ludwig-Maximilian-Universitaet in Munich, Germany, will lecture on "A Passion for Precision" on Friday from 1:30-3:30 p.m. in Zellerbach Auditorium. Glauber, from Harvard University, will be in a 4:30-5:30 p.m. panel discussion on Friday about exploring possibilities for innovative technologies.
Hours after the prize was announced Tuesday morning, Haensch told a Reuters reporter that he was "overwhelmed, happy and speechless," but that the party would have to wait because of the upcoming UC Berkeley symposium. "I have no time to celebrate right at the moment," he said. "People are waiting with champagne, but I have to go to the airport to go to San Francisco."
The cost for general admission to the three-day event is $500, or $150 for students. Registration closes today (Tuesday, Oct. 4) at 11:59 p.m.; details are available online. (Free tickets for UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory faculty and students already are gone.) A free lecture by three innovative scientists, including UC Berkeley planet hunter Geoffrey Marcy, about the search for extraterrestrial life is Friday from 8-10 p.m. in Zellerbach Auditorium.
The conference is being hosted by Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau; UC President Robert C. Dynes; Mark Richards, dean of physical sciences in the College of Letters & Science; and Marjorie Shapiro, chair of the department of physics and a research scientist at LBNL.
According to the Nobel Foundation, Glauber, 80, received his prize for his "contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence." Haensch, 63, won along with Hall, 71, of the University of Colorado, "for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique."