MEDIA ADVISORY
For Release Upon Receipt -- April 12, 2000
Contact: Joan Schwartz, (617) 353-4626, [email protected]
NOBEL LAUREATE CONFRONTS INFINITY AT BOSTON UNIVERSITY
Gerard 't Hooft to present Dean S. Edmonds, Sr. Memorial Lecture
(Boston, Mass.) - Gerard 't Hooft, winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Physics, will present "A Confrontation with Infinity," at Boston University's Metcalf Science Center on Tuesday, April 25, 2000.
't Hooft won the Nobel Prize with M. J. G. Veltman for developing the essential mathematical tools that first allowed physicists to test with great precision the unified theory of electromagnetic and weak interactions and the theory of strong nuclear interactions. These interactions form the basis of the Standard Model of particle physics and explain, among other things, the enormous energy production of the sun and other stars. 't Hooft and Veltman's mathematics also allows prediction of the masses of fundamental particles before they are discovered experimentally.
For decades scientists seeking to understand the electroweak forces, produced meaningless results, coming up with answers of "infinity." 't Hooft and Veltman built the "mathematical machinery" to yield useful results, allowing them to elucidate, in the Nobel committee's words, "the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics."
The lecture is in Room 107 of the Metcalf Science Center, 590 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, at 3:45 p.m. It will be preceeded by a reception outside the lecture room beginning at 3:20 p.m. The lecture and reception are free and open to the public.
For more information, please call the Boston University Physics Department at 617/353-2600.
Note: The Metcalf Science Center is located on the MBTA Green "B" Line, Boston University East stop.
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