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Mark Gurevitch Memorial Lecture Series

 

Mark Gurevitch

In 2006, the Department of Physics began the Mark Gurevitch Memorial Lecture series as a tribute to Dr. Mark Gurevitch, former chair of the Physics Department.

Mark Gurevitch was born in 1916 in Russia to parents Ralph and Celia Gurevitch. Dr. Gurevitch attended the University of California at Berkeley where he completed his doctorate and joined the physics department at Portland State University in 1958. He held the position of department chair for 24 years.

Dr. Gurevitch accomplished many things in his time at Portland State University; he saw the physics department grow from a two year college to a graduate program, he was instrumental in hiring the first professor of biophysics, and in growing the biophysics group within the Physics Department. Dr. Gurevitch retired twice from Portland State University, once in the early 80’s, in order to save three other faculty members from budget cuts, and again in 1991, when department chair duties were turned over to Dr. Erik Bodegom.

The Portland State University Foundation Gurevitch Lecture Fund supports the annual lecture series and allows the Department of Physics to bring internationally recognized speakers to the Portland State University campus.

 Lectures

7th Annual Lecture
May 21, 2013

5:00 PM, SBA 190

Dr. Anton Zeiliger

Physics Department at University of Vienna

Quantum Experiments with Photons: From the Foundations towards a New Technology


In the talk I will start with a brief introductory review of some important fundamental concepts in the foundations of quantum physics like superposition, the measurement process, and entanglement. Then, focusing on photons,  I show how these have given rise to the field of quantum information. I will present recent experiments on long distance quantum teleportation, on other nonlocal phenomena, and on optical quantum computation.
6th Annual Lecture
June 1, 2012
5:15pm, SB1 107

Dr. Michael Berry 

Physics Department at Bristol University

The Maggot in the Apple: Peaceful Coexistence of Incompatible Theories

In physics, as in science generally, most phenomena can be understood in more than one way: the gas in an engine obeys the laws of thermodynamics and also those of the motion of its molecules. The different theories correspond to different levels of description. These must overlap, but understanding their consilience is far from straightforward because they are usually based on seemingly incompatible concepts. The discordance arises from the fact, unappreciated until recently, that the limit in which the more general theory reduces to the less general (usually older) theory is mathematically singular. One consequence is a range of phenomena, of intense current interest, inhabiting the borderlands between the theories. I will explore this theme with examples from the physics of fluids, light and the quantum world.
5th Annual Lecture
March 18 , 2010 
5pm Hoffman Hall

George E. Smith

Fellow of IEEE, APS, and member of the National Academy of Engineering. IEEE Electron Devices Society Distinguished Service Award, Stuart Ballentine Medal of the Franklin Institute (1973); Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award of IEEE (1974); Progress Medal of the Photographic Society of America (1986); IEEE Device Research Conference Breakthrough Award (1999); Edwin H. Land Medal by the Society for Imaging Science and Technology (2001); and the C&C Prize (Computer and Communications) of the NEC Foundation, Tokyo (1999), Charles Stark Draper Prize (2006)

Winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics

The Invention and Early History of the Charge-Coupled Device (CCD)
4th Annual Lecture
May 8, 2009

Sidney Altman

Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental BiologyProfessor of Chemistry, Biophysical Chemistry & Organic ChemistryYale UniversityWinner of the 1989 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

From Physics to Molecular Biology

My travels from a nascent physicist to a student of molecular biology will be described in some detail. What I did in molecular biology and how my training in physics played a role will also be summarized.
3rd Annual Lecture
April 18, 2008

Douglas Osheroff

Department of Physics, Stanford University
Winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics

How Advances in Science are Made

How advances in science are made and how they may come to benefit mankind at large are complex issues.  The discoveries that most influence the way we think about nature seldom can be anticipated and the same often can be said for new inventions and technologies.  One thing is most clear: seldom are such advances made by individuals alone.  Rather, they result from the progress of the scientific community-asking questions, developing new technologies to answer those questions, and sharing their results and their ideas with others.  However, there are research strategies that can substantially increase the probability of one's making a discovery.  Dr. Osheroff will illustrate some of these strategies in the context of a number of well-known discoveries, including the work he did as a graduate student, for which he shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1996.
2nd Annual Lecture
May 11, 2007 

Brian Schmidt

Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Australian National University.
Recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, 2011

The Universe from Beginning to End

To explain our observations of the Cosmos, Astronomers believe the Universe began in a Big Bang, and is expanding around us. How Big and Old is the Universe? What is in the Universe, and how will it End? Brian Schmidt will describe the Universe which we live in, and how astronomers have used exploding stars, known as supernovae, to track the expansion of the Universe back some 10 Billion years and to answer some of these and other fundamental questions about our Universe.
1st Annual Lecture
April 7, 2006 

Leo Kadanoff

Departments of Physics and Mathematics, University of Chicago.
President-Elect of the Americal Physical Society

 

Making a Splash; Breaking a Neck: The Development of Complexity in Physical Systems

The fundamental laws of physics are very simple. They can be written on the top half of an ordinary piece of paper. The world about us is very complex. Whole libraries hardly serve to describe it. Indeed, any living organism exhibits a degree of complexity quite beyond the capacity of our libraries. This complexity has led some thinkers to suggest that living things are not the outcome of physical law but instead the creation of a (super)-intelligent designer.

In this talk, we examine the development of complexity in fluid flow. Examples include splashing water, necking of fluids, swirls in heated gases, and jets thrown up from beds of sand. We watch complexity develop in front of our eyes. Mostly, we are able to understand and explain what we are seeing. We do our work by following a succession of very specific situations. In following these specific problems, we soon get to broader issues: predictability and chaos, mechanisms for the generation of complexity and of simple laws, and finally the question of whether there is a natural tendency toward the formation of complex ''machines''