Michael S. Turner Bruce V. and Diana M. Rauner Distinguished Service Professor of Physics, the University of Chicago Michael S. Turner is a theoretical astrophysicist and the Bruce V. and Diana M. Rauner Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He is also Director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at Chicago, which he helped to establish, and formerly served as the President of the American Physical Society. He received his B.S. from Caltech (1971), his M.S. (1973) and Ph.D. (1978) from Stanford. Turner helped to pioneer the interdisciplinary field of particle astrophysics and cosmology, and with Edward Kolb initiated the Fermilab astrophysics program. He led the National Academy study Quarks to the Cosmos that laid out the strategic vision for the field. Turner’s scholarly contributions include predicting cosmic acceleration and coining the term dark energy, showing how quantum fluctuations evolved into the seed perturbations for galaxies during cosmic inflation, and several key ideas that led to the cold dark matter theory of structure formation. Turner’s current national service includes membership on the NRC’s Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy (COSEPUP) and on the Senior Editorial Board of Science Magazine, Chairmanship of the OECD Global Science Forum’s Astroparticle Physics International Forum, a member of the Board of Directors of the Fermi Research Alliance, the Secretary of Class I of the National Academy of Sciences, and the founding Chair of ScienceCounts, which promotes the awareness and support of science. Participant In: Science and the Big Questions: Roundtable Series on the Physical and Spiritual World, the Brain-Mind Connection, and Human Development and Genetics Through 2015 Past Event The Helix Center is pleased to announce receipt of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation in support of a series of fourteen roundtables addressing big questions in the physical, natural, and biological sciences and the humanities. The topics are: Knowledge and Limitations; The Span of Infinity; Complexity and Emergence; The Search for Immortality; The Sublime Experience; The Meditative State; The… read more » The Realm of Mystery Saturday, October 24, 2015 2:30-4:30 pm Past Event Watch the video » Donald Rumsfeld famously said, “There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” From a philosophical perspective, how do… read more »
Science and the Big Questions: Roundtable Series on the Physical and Spiritual World, the Brain-Mind Connection, and Human Development and Genetics Through 2015 Past Event The Helix Center is pleased to announce receipt of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation in support of a series of fourteen roundtables addressing big questions in the physical, natural, and biological sciences and the humanities. The topics are: Knowledge and Limitations; The Span of Infinity; Complexity and Emergence; The Search for Immortality; The Sublime Experience; The Meditative State; The… read more »
The Realm of Mystery Saturday, October 24, 2015 2:30-4:30 pm Past Event Watch the video » Donald Rumsfeld famously said, “There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” From a philosophical perspective, how do… read more »