Marker Lectures in the Physical Sciences to be Held from 29 April to 1 May 2009
Patrick Lee, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), will present the Russell Marker Lectures in the Physical Sciences from 29 April to 1 May 2009 at the Penn State University Park Campus. The free public lectures are sponsored by the Penn State Eberly College of Science.
The series begins with a lecture intended for a general audience, titled "Unconventional Superconductors and Magnets," at 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, 29 April, in 117 Osmond Laboratory. In this talk, Lee will discuss several examples of unconventional superconductor materials and will describe what makes them unconventional. According to Lee, the origin of these superconductors seems to be closely related to electron repulsion and magnetism, and the quest for an understanding of these superconductors has led to a search for unconventional magnets. Light refreshments will follow this lecture.
Lee also will give two specialized lectures. The first lecture, titled "Quantum Spin Liquid: From Drought to Deluge," will be held at 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, 30 April, in 117 Osmond Laboratory. A social will be held preceding this talk, starting at 3:30 p.m. in the Davey Laboratory/Osmond Laboratory overpass. The second lecture, titled "Proposals For Experimental Probe of Spin Liquid Candidates," will be held at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, 1 May, in S-5 Osmond Laboratory.
Lee's research program focuses on the study of strongly correlated electronic systems, which are materials in which the interactions between electrons play a crucial role and lead to novel phenomena that are not explainable by single-electron band-structure effects. Examples include the quantum Hall effect, mesoscopic systems, and effects due to disorder. More recently, Lee has focused on the problem of high-temperature superconductivity. Lee has made key contributions to the theory of disordered electronic systems, and he is a pioneer in "mesoscopic physics," the study of small devices at low temperatures. He also introduced the concept of universal conductance fluctuations to describe such devices.
Lee joined MIT in 1982 after working as a researcher at Bell Laboratories for approximately ten years. He currently is the William and Emma Rogers Professor of Physics at MIT, and he is the division head of the Atomic, Biological, Condensed Matter, and Plasma Physics Group in the Department of Physics at MIT. Lee is the recipient of the 2005 Dirac Medal of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics and the Oliver Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Physical Society.
The Marker Lectures were established in 1984 through a gift from Russell Earl Marker, professor emeritus of chemistry at Penn State, whose pioneering synthetic methods revolutionized the steroid-hormone industry and opened the door to the current era of hormone therapies, including the birth-control pill. The Marker endowment allows the Penn State Eberly College of Science to present annual Marker Lectures in astronomy and astrophysics, the chemical sciences, evolutionary biology, genetic engineering, the mathematical sciences, and the physical sciences. For more information about the lectures, contact Kelly Chadwick at (814) 863-9759.
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