University of Colorado at Boulder physics Professor Allan Franklin will deliver the 95th annual Distinguished Research Lecture on Tuesday, Oct. 8, at 5:30 p.m. in CU-Boulder's Fiske Planetarium.
The lecture, titled "Experiment, Evidence and Science," is free and open to the public. The talk is sponsored by the Council on Research and Creative Work through the CU-Boulder Graduate School and will be followed by a reception.
The Distinguished Research Lectureship is the highest honor that the Graduate School bestows upon a faculty member. Its purpose is to honor an entire body of research and creative work, typically over a three-decade period.
"The lecture defends the old fashioned view that science is a reasonable enterprise based on experimental evidence and reasoned in critical discussion," Franklin said. "I am very grateful to receive this honor."
Franklin began his career as an experimental high-energy physicist and previously taught at Princeton University. He has been a member of the CU-Boulder faculty since 1967, and a visiting professor at a number of institutions, including the California Institute of Technology.
In the mid-1970s, Franklin changed his research interests to the history of philosophy of science, focusing particularly on the roles of experiments in physics. He was a research fellow at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology, the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, and at Chelsea and King's College, University of London.
In 2000, he was named a Miegunyah Distinguished Fellow at the University of Melbourne. In the spring of 2002, Franklin received a Boulder Faculty Assembly Excellence in Research Award.
Franklin has authored six books and his seventh book, "Selectivity and Discord: Two Problems of Experiment," will be published in November 2002.