The Astronomer Royal of Great Britain, Sir Martin Rees of Cambridge University, will give a free illustrated lecture on the evolution of the universe at the University of Colorado at Boulder on Thursday, April 20.
Rees will lecture on "Six Cosmic Numbers: Understanding the Beginning and the End" at 8 p.m. in Macky Auditorium. The 35th George Gamow Memorial Lecture is intended for general audiences.
Rees is the Royal Society research professor at Cambridge University and is a former president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He has held visiting professorships at Harvard University, the California Institute of Technology and the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study.
He has contributed many ideas to the current understanding of galaxies, quasars, black holes and the evolution of the universe. He is an honorary member of the national science academies of the United States and Russia and has received the Franklin Institute's prestigious Bower Award for science.
In addition to extensive research activities, Rees also lectures and writes frequently for general audiences. His books include "Before the Beginning: Our Universe and Others," "New Perspectives in Astrophysical Cosmology" and "Just Six Numbers." In 1996, he co-authored "Gravity's Fatal Attraction" about black holes with CU-Boulder Professor Mitchell Begelman.
"Martin Rees and Mitchell Begelman are probably the world's leading authorities on the astrophysics of black holes," writes British scientist Stephen Hawking.
The George Gamow lecture series has featured public talks by internationally famous scientists since 1971. The series honors the late CU-Boulder physics professor who helped develop the big-bang theory of the creation of the universe. All Gamow lectures are intended to communicate science to non-scientists.
For more information call (303) 492-6431.