Public Lectures

The Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM) with the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) and UCLA Department of Physics and Astronomy presents a public lecture by Dr. David J. Gross, Director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics and Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Monday, February 22, 2010, 4:30 pm
(CNSI Auditorium)

Reception in the IPAM building immediately following the lecture.

Abstract:      

I will review the present state of knowledge in elementary particle physics and the questions that we are currently addressing, and discuss the experimental revolutions that might occur at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. I shall also review the state of string theory. The necessity to go beyond the standard model of particle physics and to understand quantum gravity has led to this ambitious attempt to unify all the forces of nature and all forms of matter as different vibrations of a string-like object. But string theory is still in a pre-revolutionary stage. Although remarkable progress has been achieved in the last decade we still lack a fundamental understanding of the theory. Many string theorists suspect that a profound conceptual change in our concept of space and time will be required for the final formulation of string theory.