TWENTIETH CENTURY GIANTS OF SCIENCE
Emeritus Professor David Wolfe, physicist, University of New Mexico, United States of America
Monday 26–Wednesday 28 January 11.15 am COURSE FEES R345; Staff and students R173
Isaac Newton created modern science in the seventeenth century. He showed that the language the Universe spoke was mathematics, and he invented the calculus to communicate with nature. Late in the nineteenth century the atom, the basis of everything, was discovered to have a structure which was difficult to understand. The difficulty was that the language spoken at the atomic level was completely different from the one then in use. Thus it was necessary to create and understand quantum mechanics. The first person to understand this problem was the Dane Niels Bohr. There were many great thinkers to follow, and Robert Oppenheimer was one of the finest. A theorist, yet chosen to lead the development of the most horrible weapon imaginable, Richard Feynman opened many new doors and introduced a structure to help understand quantum mechanics.
Lecture titles
- Niels Bohr: the father of quantum mechanics
- Robert Oppenheimer: so much more than just the builder of the bomb
- Richard Feynman: the father of the quark, and so much more
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