Theme: Einstein

Albert Einstein is widely-regarded as one of the greatest physicists of the modern era. His crowning intellectual achievement, General Relativity, still guides us and challenges us 100 years later. We’re excited to celebrate, debate, extrapolate (and maybe even “poke the box” a bit) around Einstein’s work…and what it means for our shared future.

Case Western Reserve University - The Tinkham Veale University Center
11038 Bellflower Road
Cleveland, Ohio, 44106
United States

Claudia de Rham

Assistant Professor of Physics, Case Western Reserve University

Claudia de Rham is an assistant professor of physics at Case Western Reserve University. Her research is in the area of theoretical cosmology, and she is interested in exploring field theory models of gravity which could account for the accelerated expansion of the Universe. In particular she has been at the forefront of the development of theories of Massive Gravity where the graviton, the particle carrier of the gravitational force may be massive. She completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge on Braneworld models, and went on to perform postdoctoral research at McGill University, McMaster University and the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics in Canada. She was an SNF Professor at University of Geneva before moving to Case Western Reserve.

Glenn Starkman

Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Director of the Center for Education and Research in Cosmology and Astrophysics, Case Western Reserve University

Glenn Starkman is Professor of Physics and Astronomy and director of the Center for Education and Research in Cosmology and Astrophysics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He also directs the Institute for the Science of Origins, a partnership of CWRU, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and ideastream, Northeast Ohio’s public media umbrella organization. As Director of the Institute for the Science of Origins, Glenn hosts the weekly Origins Science Scholars lecture series and the accompanying Origins television series on WVIZ/World.

John Ruhl

Connecticut Professor in Physics and Astronomy, Case Western Reserve University

Over the past 25 years John Ruhl has built and used instruments to measure the properties of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, a remnant glow from the Big Bang. His current projects focus on finding a signature of Cosmic Inflation imprinted by gravity waves created at the birth of our universe. These measurements – done from the South Pole station in Antarctica and from stratospheric balloons – have taught us an enormous amount about the cosmos, which we can only understand in the context provided by General Relativity.

Nergis Mavalvala

Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics Associate Department Head of Physics, MIT

Nergis Mavalvala is a physicist whose research links the world of quantum mechanics, usually apparent only at the atomic scale, with some of the most powerful, yet elusive, forces in the cosmos. She received a B.A. from Wellesley College in 1990 and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1997. She was a postdoctoral fellow and research scientist at the California Institute of Technology between 1997 and 2002. Since 2002, she has been on the Physics faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she is now a Professor of Physics and recipient of a 2010 MacArthur “genius” award. In her spare time, she loves to bicycle long distances, playing sports, and hanging out with her family.

Paul Steinhardt

Albert Einstein Professor in Science and Director of the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science, Princeton University

Paul Steinhardt is a theoretical physicist whose research spans cosmology, astrophysics, particle physics, condensed matter physics, geophysics and photonics. He is one of the architects of inflationary cosmology, a modification of the big bang theory that proposes to explain the large scale structure of the universe. He also the first to demonstrated phenomenon known as eternal inflation, an unintended consequence of inflation and quantum physics that leads to a multiverse, instead of the smooth and flat universe that inflation was supposed to create. This led him to become a skeptic and to develop competing alternatives, such as the cyclic theory of the universe, in which the big bang is replaced by a big bounce.

Ruth Gregory

Professor of Mathematics and Physics, Royal Society University Research Fellowship

Ruth Gregory’s research centers on the interface between fundamental high energy physics and cosmology. Having studied at Cambridge University, she obtained a degree in mathematics. She went on to earn her PhD in Particle Cosmology with Stephen Hawking’s relativity group. While in Chicago as a postdoctoral researcher she spent three years at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) and two years at the Fermi Institute in the University of Chicago.

Stacy McGaugh

Chair of the Department of Astronomy and Director of the Warner & Swasey Observatory, Case Western Reserve University

Professor Stacy McGaugh studies galaxies, cosmology, and the mass discrepancy problem. His primary interest is in low surface brightness galaxies. These diffuse objects tell us a great deal about galaxy formation and evolution. He has worked extensively on galaxy dynamics, showing that the Tully-Fisher relation is fundamentally a relation between the rotation speed of a spiral galaxy and its baryonic mass (the sum of stars and gas). He successfully predicted the velocity dispersions of many of the dwarf satellite galaxies of Andromeda as they were discovered. His contributions to cosmology include the quantitatively accurate prediction of the amplitude ratio of the first-to-second peak of the acoustic power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background.