John Wesley Powell Memorial Lectures
The John Wesley Powell Memorial Lectures were inaugurated in 1929
in honor of the distinguished geologist and leader of the first
expedition down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Each
year since then, with the exception of the years during WWII when
the Division did not hold meetings, SWARM has invited a distinguished
scholar to deliver a lecture at the Annual Meeting on a subject
of his or her choosing. An attempt has always been made to select
speakers who represent as wide a diversity of scientific endeavor
as possible. Some of the previous Powell lecturers have included
Oliver Sacks (2000), Holmes Rolston III (1998), Carl Sagan (1992),
Lawrence Slobodin (1987), Paul S. Martin (1978), Eugene Odum (1968),
A.H. Compton (1939), Otto Struve (1934) and Aldo Leopold (1933).
The Powell Fund was established in 1958 with Division funds that
had accrued during the war years. For many years the interest from
this fund was sufficient to finance an honorarium and expenses for
the invited speaker. Due to increased expenses and in the amounts
provided to speakers along with lowered interest rates, the interest
is no longer sufficient to maintain the fund. The Division is asking
for your help in augmenting the Powell Fund to a level where the
interest can, once again, support the cost required to maintain
the high quality of the Powell Lecture.
Suggestions for future Powell Lecturers are always welcome and
can be sent to the Executive Director.
2010 JOHN WESLEY POWELL MEMORIAL LECTURE
Dark Energy and the Future of Science
Dr. Stephon H. Alexander
Haverford College
Over the last three decades, Cosmology has matured into a precision science; rich with data that tells an unexpected story of the universe that we inhabit. Cosmologists were shocked to learn from the data that the expansion of the universe is speeding up. The culprit? A mysterious substance called Dark Energy. The problem is that Dark energy is far different from any form of matter or energy known to us and it makes up most of our universe. I will discuss some of the recent ideas about the nature of Dark Energy and discuss what future generations of scientists may have to cook up to unveil its nature. It may be that we will have to revisit some of the overlooked foundational problems in quantum mechanics in the face of gravity. I will speculate that cosmology may have to extend its boundaries into the questions that are commonplace in the biological sciences.
STEPHON H. ALEXANDER is an associate professor of physics at Haverford College. He received his Ph.D. in physics from Brown University in 2000, with a dissertation titled “Topics at the Interface between String Theory and Cosmology.” From 2000 to 2002, he held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council of the United Kingdom. He recently won the National Science Foundation CAREER award and was elected a National Geographic Emerging Explorer.
Rice University
BRC Building: Room 103
Saturday, April 10, 2:00pm
Admission is free and open to the public.
Sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Southwestern and Rocky Mountain Division. For inquiries, please contact David T. Nash, Executive Director of AAAS-SWARM at: dtnash@gmail.com.
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