Michalik Lecture on January 24, 2011 Features Roger Penrose
We are pleased to announce that the 2011 Michalik Lecture will feature noted mathematician Roger Penrose. The title of his talk will be "Can we see through the Big Bang, into another World?" Penrose has a remarkable resume and will certainly have a stimulating and thought-provoking presentation. Highlights of his background include:
- Earning his Ph.D. at Cambridge (St John's College) in 1958, and writing a thesis on "tensor methods in algebraic geometry" under algebraist and geometer John A. Todd.
- He devised and popularised the Penrose triangle in the 1950s, describing it as "impossibility in its purest form" and exchanged material with the artist M. C. Escher, whose earlier depictions of impossible objects partly inspired it.
- In 1965 at Cambridge, he proved that singularities (such as black holes) could be formed from the gravitational collapse of immense, dying stars.
- His 1971 invention of spin networks, which later came to form the geometry of spacetime in loop quantum gravity.
- The 1974 discovery of Penrose tilings, which are formed from two tiles that can only tile the plane nonperiodically, and are the first tilings to exhibit fivefold rotational symmetry.
- In 2004 Penrose released The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe, a 1,099-page book aimed at giving a comprehensive guide to the laws of physics.
His awards for his contributions to science are just as prestigious:
- He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1972.
- In 1975, Stephen Hawking and Penrose were jointly awarded the Eddington Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society.
- In 1985, he was awarded the Royal Society Royal Medal.
- Along with Stephen Hawking, he was awarded the prestigious Wolf Foundation Prize for Physics in 1988.
- In 1990 Penrose was awarded the Albert Einstein Medal for outstanding work related to the work of Albert Einstein by the Albert Einstein Society.
- From 1992 to 1995 he served as President of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation.
- In 1994, Penrose was knighted for services to science.
- In 1998, he was elected Foreign Associate of the United States National Academy of Sciences. In 2000 he was appointed to the Order of Merit.
The Michalik Lecture Series is a way of continuing to recognize former student and faculty member Edmund R. Michalik’s long history with the University of Pittsburgh and the Department of Mathematics. From receiving his M.S. in Mathematics in 1940 throughout his career until 1980 he volunteered his time and taught as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Mathematics. His dedication to both mathematics and the University was exemplary.