John Stachel, emeritus professor of physics and director of the Center for Einstein Studies at Boston University, will deliver a lecture titledEinsteins Miraculous Yearat 8 p.m. Friday (Feb. 4) in McKenna Hall at the University of Notre Dame.
Notre Dame physicists Ikaros Bigi, Christopher Kolda and Grant Mathews will present a pre-lecture,Einstein for Beginners,at 7 p.m. in the same location. Both presentations are free and open to the public.
Physicists have designated 2005 as the World Year of Physics in celebration of the centenary of what historians call Albert Einsteins annus mirabilis (miraculous year).In 1905, Einstein, then a patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland, published three revolutionary papers on special relativity, the photoelectric effect, and Brownian motion in the same volume of the Annalen der Physik. Notre Dames Department of Physics will mark the year with a series of lectures, conferences and workshops.
Stachel has written about Einstein and his work for 40 years. Trained as a theoretical physicist specializing in the theory of relativity, he was chosen as the founding editor of the collected papers of Einstein.
Stachels lecture is sponsored by the Universitys Department of Physics, the History and Philosophy of Science Program, and the College of Sciences Edison Lecture Series.
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