Winter Public Lecture Series in Physics
ABSTRACT:
The 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to John Mather and George Smoot for their study of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation using the COBE spacecraft. The CMB radiation was also the topic of the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics; in that year the winners were Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson for discovering it in the early 1960's. There may well be more prizes on the way based on the CMB, because it is continuing to reveal more and more about the big bang and the properties of the very early universe. Most recently the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe has returned vastly more information than COBE about the variations in brightness of the CMB, meanwhile observations from the ground are also telling us a lot about the big bang and its outcome.
SPEAKER PROFILE: This is the fourth
lecture in this year's
Winter Public Lecture Series in Physics. The series started in 2002 and is
held in honour of Alexander and Leicester McAulay, two renowned Physics
professors, who were inspiring teachers and did
significant research at the University of Tasmania during the early years.
Further information is available from Dr. John Humble, ph. (03)62262396
e-mail: John.Humble@utas.edu.au or Dr Elizabeth Chelkowska, ph. (03)62262725,
e-mail: Elizabeth.Chelkowska@utas.edu.au. The School of Mathematics and
Physics is co-organising the lecture.
John M. Dickey is Professor of Physics at the University of Tasmania.
Before coming to UTas in 2004 he was Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Minnesota (1982-2004), Associate Astronomer at the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory (1979-82), Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Massachusetts (1977-79), and a pre-doctoral research fellow at the Arecibo Observatory (1974-76). He has a BS in Physics from Stanford University (1972) and an MS (1974) and PhD (1977) in Astrophysics from Cornell University.
He has been awarded a National Merit Scholarship, an NSF Graduate Fellowship, a Sloan Foundation Fellowship, a Bush Foundation Fellowship, a Netherlands Astronomical Fellowship, and sabbatical fellowships from the Universities of Leiden and Bonn, the Observatory of Paris and the CSIRO. He has served on science advisory committees for NASA, the National Science Foundation (chair), the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (chair), the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Centre, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (chair), the Australia Telescope National Facility (chair), the Australian Antarctic Division, and the International Square Kilometre Array Consortium. He is a member of the International Astronomical Union, the American Astronomical Society, the Australian Institute of Physics and the Astronomical Society of Australia.
ALL WELCOME