2021 STAG Online Public Lecture by Professor Jim Gates Event

Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." Turing said, "Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine." This presentation describes the speaker's journey to use the Einstein and Turing observations as inspirations to solve an almost fifty-year-old puzzle in theoretical physics.

Sylvester James “Jim” Gates, Jr., is an American theoretical physicist. He received his Ph.D. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is well known for work in supersymmetry, supergravity and string theory, as well as for his advocacy for science and science education in the United States and abroad. He held a number of prestigious positions first at the University of Maryland and after 2017 in Brown University. Gates served on the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology from 2009-2016. He has been elected in numerous Societies and Academies and is a past president of National Society of Black Physicists and the current president of the American Physical Society. He received the 2011 National Medal of Science, the highest award given to scientists in the USA.