10:00 am, Registration: Morning Tea & Coffee 11:00 am, Introductory remarks
11:10 am, Sir Martin Rees: `Our Complex Cosmos and Its Future'
11:50 am, Professor Jim Hartle: `Theories of Everything and Hawking's Wave Function of the Universe' 12:30 pm, Lunch at Churchill College, courtesy of SGI 2:30 pm, Sir Roger Penrose: `The Problem of Space-Time
Singularities: Implications for Quantum Gravity?'
3:10 pm, Professor Kip Thorne: `Warping spacetime' 3:50 pm, Afternoon tea 4:30 pm, Professor Stephen Hawking, `60 years in a nutshell' 5:10 pm, Finish
Brief speaker biographies
Professor Sir Martin Rees
Sir Martin Rees was a student of the late Dennis Sciama who also
supervised Stephen Hawking. He is currently
Astronomer Royal and holds a Royal Society Research Professorship at
the University of Cambridge where he has spent most of his career.
Martin has received many honours for his contributions to relativistic
astrophysics, black holes and cosmology. One of his most noted achievements
was his
realization that the power house of quasars is a massive rotating
black hole accreting dust and gas and emitting enormous collimated
radio beams stretching across the sky. In addition to his
technical scientific work, Martin is well known as a popularizer of
science,
especially astronomy, and he has been very active in the British
Association for the Advancement of Science.
He is the author of a number of popular books on science including
most recently, Our Cosmic Habitat and Just Six Numbers.
Professor James Hartle
Jim Hartle was educated at Princeton University and the
California Institute of Technology where he completed a Ph.D. in 1964.
He is currently Professor of Physics at the University of California
Santa Barbara. His scientific work is concerned with the application
of Einstein's relativistic theory of gravitation - general relativity
- to realistic astrophysical situations, especially cosmology. He has
made important contributions to the understanding of gravitational waves,
relativistic
stars, and black holes. He is currently interested in the earliest
moments of the big bang where the subjects of quantum mechanics,
quantum gravity, and cosmology overlap. He has visited Cambridge
often since 1971 and he has collaborated closely
with Stephen Hawking over many years, most notably on
their famous "no boundary proposal" for the origin of the universe.
He is a member of the
US National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, and is a past director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics
in Santa Barbara.
Professor Sir Roger Penrose
Sir Roger Penrose was a student of the distinguished Cambridge
geometer William
Hodge. Roger has become perhaps the most widely recognized mathematician
among the general public. His popular books, describing his unique
view point and insights on the relationship of mathematics to physics,
and indeed the structure of thought itself have received worldwide
attention, most notably The Emperor's New Mind.
Recently retired from the Rouse Ball Chair of Mathematics at
Oxford
University his professional work has varied from seminal contributions
to our understanding of the global structure of spacetime which underpin
our current view of black holes and the Big Bang. For many years
he has been developing the Twistor approach to the quantization
of gravity. More recently he has been concerned with relationship between
the brain and quantum mechanics and gravity. His extraordinary
geometrical imagination has lead to numerous other discoveries
including (with his geneticist father) impossible figures
and quasi-crystals, novel materials that defy the conventional rules
of crystallography.
Professor Kip Thorne
Kip Thorne was a student of the renowned Princeton physicist
John Wheeler. He has worked for most of his professional career
at Caltech where he heads one of the world's leading groups working
on relativistic astrophysics. Kip and
fellow Wheeler student Charles
Misner are the authors of the extremely influential textbook Gravitation
which has become the bible of those wanting to learn and apply
general
relativity to astrophysics. Kip's research has covered almost
all
aspects of the subject from the accretion discs
around black holes to the X-rays they emit. He has for many years been a
forceful and effective advocate of LIGO, the project to detect
gravitational radiation using large-scale laser interferometers.
Apart from technical papers and books Kip has written a highly
successful popular book, Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's
Outrageous Legacy.
Sir Martin Rees was a student of the late Dennis Sciama who also
supervised Stephen Hawking. He is currently
Astronomer Royal and holds a Royal Society Research Professorship at
the University of Cambridge where he has spent most of his career.
Martin has received many honours for his contributions to relativistic
astrophysics, black holes and cosmology. One of his most noted achievements
was his
realization that the power house of quasars is a massive rotating
black hole accreting dust and gas and emitting enormous collimated
radio beams stretching across the sky. In addition to his
technical scientific work, Martin is well known as a popularizer of
science,
especially astronomy, and he has been very active in the British
Association for the Advancement of Science.
He is the author of a number of popular books on science including
most recently, Our Cosmic Habitat and Just Six Numbers.
Jim Hartle was educated at Princeton University and the
California Institute of Technology where he completed a Ph.D. in 1964.
He is currently Professor of Physics at the University of California
Santa Barbara. His scientific work is concerned with the application
of Einstein's relativistic theory of gravitation - general relativity
- to realistic astrophysical situations, especially cosmology. He has
made important contributions to the understanding of gravitational waves,
relativistic
stars, and black holes. He is currently interested in the earliest
moments of the big bang where the subjects of quantum mechanics,
quantum gravity, and cosmology overlap. He has visited Cambridge
often since 1971 and he has collaborated closely
with Stephen Hawking over many years, most notably on
their famous "no boundary proposal" for the origin of the universe.
He is a member of the
US National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, and is a past director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics
in Santa Barbara.
Sir Roger Penrose was a student of the distinguished Cambridge
geometer William
Hodge. Roger has become perhaps the most widely recognized mathematician
among the general public. His popular books, describing his unique
view point and insights on the relationship of mathematics to physics,
and indeed the structure of thought itself have received worldwide
attention, most notably The Emperor's New Mind.
Recently retired from the Rouse Ball Chair of Mathematics at
Oxford
University his professional work has varied from seminal contributions
to our understanding of the global structure of spacetime which underpin
our current view of black holes and the Big Bang. For many years
he has been developing the Twistor approach to the quantization
of gravity. More recently he has been concerned with relationship between
the brain and quantum mechanics and gravity. His extraordinary
geometrical imagination has lead to numerous other discoveries
including (with his geneticist father) impossible figures
and quasi-crystals, novel materials that defy the conventional rules
of crystallography.
Kip Thorne was a student of the renowned Princeton physicist
John Wheeler. He has worked for most of his professional career
at Caltech where he heads one of the world's leading groups working
on relativistic astrophysics. Kip and
fellow Wheeler student Charles
Misner are the authors of the extremely influential textbook Gravitation
which has become the bible of those wanting to learn and apply
general
relativity to astrophysics. Kip's research has covered almost
all
aspects of the subject from the accretion discs
around black holes to the X-rays they emit. He has for many years been a
forceful and effective advocate of LIGO, the project to detect
gravitational radiation using large-scale laser interferometers.
Apart from technical papers and books Kip has written a highly
successful popular book, Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's
Outrageous Legacy.