Lisa Randall, author and professor of physics at Harvard University, will deliver the James S. Plant Distinguished Scientist Lecture on Monday, March 9, at 8 p.m., in Wellin Hall, Schambach Center. Randall’s lecture, titled “Knocking on Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World,” is free and open to the public.
Prior to the evening lecture she will give a talk about her recent work in dark matter (also open to the public) at 4 p.m. in SCCT G041.
Randall earned her Ph.D. from Harvard University and held professorships at MIT and Princeton University. She now studies theoretical particle physics and cosmology at Harvard University, where she researches our current comprehension of the properties and interactions of matter. Randall has had a public presence through her writing, lectures, and radio and TV appearances. She has pursued art-science connections, writing a libretto for Hypermusic: A Projective Opera in Seven Planes that premiered in the Pompidou Center in Paris. She also co-curated an art exhibit for the Los Angeles Arts Association.
Currently one of the most cited and influential theoretical physicists, Randall is a past winner of an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship, a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, a DOE Outstanding Junior Investigator Award, and the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. In 2007 she also received the Julius Lilienfeld Prize from the American Physical Society for her work on elementary particle physics and cosmology.
Randall was on the list of Time Magazine's “100 Most Influential People” of 2007 and was one of 40 people featured in The Rolling Stone 40th Anniversary issue that year. She was featured in Newsweek's “Who's Next in 2006” as “one of the most promising theoretical physicists of her generation” and in 2008, Randall was among Esquire Magazine's “75 Most Influential People.”
The James S. Plant Distinguished Scientist Lecture series was established in 1987 through a bequest from Dr. Plant, Hamilton College class of 1912 and an eminent child psychiatrist, to bring to the campus outstanding scientists as guest lecturers.
