Los Alamos Historical Society Hosts Reception For Nobel Laureate/Manhattan Project Theorist Roy Glauber

Nobel Laureate Professor Roy Glauber. Photo by Markus Pössel/wikipedia

HISTORICAL SOCIETY News:

The Los Alamos Historical Society opens its 2015-2016 lecture series, “70 Years Since World War II”, with Nobel Laureate and Manhattan Project theorist, Professor Roy Glauber.

The public is invited to a special reception for Dr. Glauber at 7:30 p.m., Sept. 29 at Fuller Lodge.

Dr. Glauber is in New Mexico visiting the University of New Mexico and giving a director’s colloquium at Los Alamos National Laboratory on the afternoon of Sept. 29. The director’s colloquium is open only to badgeholders, so this reception will allow non-badgeholders the opportunity to interact with Dr. Glauber and ask him questions.

Professor Glauber is the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics, Emeritus at Harvard University. He shared the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics “for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence.”

His early childhood was spent with his parents, traversing the Midwest with his traveling salesman father and school-teacher mother. Eventually they settled back in New York City, and he attended the Bronx High School of Science. He developed an interest in astronomy and built a telescope that he lectured on and displayed at the 1939/1940 World’s Fair.

In 1943, as a sophomore at Harvard, he was recruited to join the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos as part of the Army’s Special Engineer Detachment (SED). It was John von Neumann who drove Glauber up the hill to Los Alamos from Santa Fe. Dr. Glauber worked at Los Alamos for two years on the critical mass and on theoretical aspects of many experiments. He was in group T-2 of the Theoretical Division led by Hans Bethe.

For many years he has been the “Keeper of the Broom” for the Ig Nobel Prize, which has Nobel Laureates awarding scientists for research achievements that “make people laugh, and then think.” (http://www.improbable.com/ig/)

Visit http://losalamoshistory.org for a listing and schedule of other Los Alamos Historical Society lectures and events.

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