Theoretical Physicist Smolin to Deliver Rustgi Lecture

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Lee Smolin, a theoretical physicist and founding member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, will speak on "Using the Universe as a Microscope to Probe the Micro-Structure of Space and Time" at the 14th annual Moti Lal Rustgi Memorial Lecture at the University at Buffalo.

It will be held at 4:30 p.m. April 4 in 225 Natural Sciences Complex of the UB North (Amherst) Campus.

The Rustgi lecture, presented by the Department of Physics in the UB College of Arts and Sciences, will be free and open to the public. The annual lecture is held to honor Moti Lal Rustgi, professor of physics at UB from 1966-92.

Smolin's main contributions to the field of physics are in the area of quantum gravity. He was, with Abhay Ashtekar and Carlo Rovelli, a founder of the approach known as loop quantum gravity, but he also has contributed to other approaches, including string theory and causal dynamical triangulations.

He is known as well for proposing the notion of the landscape of theories, based on his application of Darwinian methods to cosmology. In addition, he has contributed to the foundations of quantum mechanics, elementary particle physics and theoretical biology.

He is the author of three books – "Life of the Cosmos," "Three Roads to Quantum Gravity" and "The Trouble With Physics" -- which are, in part, philosophical explorations of issues raised by contemporary physics.

A graduate of Hampshire College with a degree in physics and philosophy, Smolin received a doctorate in theoretical physics from Harvard University and held postdoctoral positions at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, the Institute for Theoretical Physics (now KITP) at the University of California-Santa Barbara and the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago.

He was a member of the faculty at Yale, Syracuse and Penn State universities, and helped found the Center for Gravitational Physics and Geometry at Penn State. He has been a researcher at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Waterloo since September 2001.