UB Alumnus to Discuss His Work On The "Beauty Quark"

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The so-called "beauty quark" will be the subject of a talk to be given at 7:30 p.m. on April 30 in Room 201 of the Natural Sciences Complex on the University at Buffalo North (Amherst) Campus.

Ronald Poling, Ph.D., professor of physics at the University of Minnesota who has built his career on the study of the beauty, or b quark, will discuss "The Pursuit of Beauty: An Adventure in Particle Physics."

He will be in Buffalo to receive the Clifford C. Furnas Memorial Award from the UB Alumni Association.

The talk, which is sponsored by the UB Department of Physics and the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, will be free and open to the public.

"Of all of the known building blocks of matter that are believed to be fundamental, the 'beauty quark' has the greatest potential to illuminate profound mysteries of the universe," Poling said.

During the next few years, several powerful facilities that will make it possible to closely study this quark will begin operation.

Poling will discuss the new discoveries about the quark that particle physicists are anticipating, as well as a brief history, including its discovery 20 years ago.

Poling, a native of Buffalo who graduated from UB in 1976, earned his doctorate at the University of Rochester for his observation of B-meson weak decays, an observation that demonstrated that upsilons, short-lived particles, were composed of this new type of quark, the beauty quark.

For information about the talk, contact Cindy Nydahl at 645-2531.