Public Lectures

How do you advise a scientist who says she has information that could be vital to the event health but she’s been told to keep it a secret? In this talk Dr. Shuchman will discuss the dramatic act of blowing the whistle in science. Drawing on the extensive information in her best-selling book including interviews with whistleblowers, surveys of scientists and public testimony - and adding new material that isn’t in the book –Shuchman will outline the benefits of scientific whistleblowing over the past 40 years. Then she will describe its aftermath. In case after case, Shuchman will give audience members the information and ask their opinions of what should have happened. Miriam Shuchman is a psychiatrist with a background in medical ethics, who teaches at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her features on ethics and psychiatry have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and the Globe and Mail, as well as on CBC Radio and National Public Radio in the United States. Her articles on medical whistleblowers have appeared in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the British Medical Journal and the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Dr. Shuchman trained in psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School and studied ethics at Dartmouth College. Her book, “The Drug Trial”, tells the full story of the Olivieri affair, Canada’s biggest science scandal, and exposes problems that should concern us all in the systems of scientific research, corporate financing and peer review. Drug trial, Miriam Shuchman, whistle blowers, Sissela Bok, Nancy Olivieri, David Kern, Cesare Maltoni, Justine Sergent, moral, responsibility, indefensible, scientists

Simon Singh grew up in Somerset, and completed his undergraduate work at Imperial College London, and his Ph.D. at Cambridge University and CERN. He has worked with the BBC’s Science Department since 1990. In 1996, Singh directed the award-winning documentary “Fermat’s Last Theorem”. The documentary was also nominated for an Emmy under the American title “The Proof”. He is the author of three books, most recently, the “Big Bang”, a history of cosmology. big bang, Simon Singh, cosmology, universe, galaxies, Hubble, Doppler effect, steady state universe, microwaves, radio astronomy

Einstein’s profound ideas about relativity and the quantum have provided generations of people with some of the most thought-provoking concepts ever proposed about the wonders and mysteries of our universe. This lively panel discussion will examine Einstein’s enormous contributions to our understanding. Relativity, Smolin, Stachel, Moffat, Einstein, relativity theory, revolutionary, quantum, Planck, unified field theory, social impact, scientific revolution, physics, history

The final part of the 04-05 Public Events series turns the spotlight on you. It’s your chance to ask a panel of Perimeter researchers for their thoughts on a wide variety of scientific topics. Heisenberg, uncertainty principle, discrete theory, space-time, Thiemann, quantum, relativity, special relativity, quantum theory, Emerson, coherent superpostions, Shrodinger, Sorkin, clock, Freidel, gravity, Romelsberger, Burgess, Einstein, string theory, quantum entanglement

Edward Witten is one of the world’s preeminent string theorists. Among his many accomplishments, he is widely known for showing how five different variations of string theory all belong within a single framework. His awards range from a MacArthur \'genius grant\' to the Fields Medal - the highest honour in the world of mathematics. Professor Witten will examine key discoveries made by physicists in the 20th century such as the detection of antimatter. He will then describe how many of today’s leading scientists are working at the high energy frontier of elementary particle accelerators in their quest to uncover the quantum structures of space and time. supersymmetry, Edward Witten, particle physics, quantum mechanics, waves, Rutherford, antimatter, antiparticle, quantum uncertainty principle, accelerator, space-time

Anton Zeilinger, a renowned physicist who successfully teleported light particles, will explain how quantum properties are used today to process and transmit information. Anton Zeilinger, Einstein, quantum information, quantum physics, entanglement, cryptography, quantum mechanics, teleportation, quantum computer

The strange paradoxes and puzzles of the quantum behaviour of black holes and the things that fall into them led to a spirited battle of ideas between Stephen Hawking, Leonard Susskind and other scientists. Resolving the debate may change our entire understanding of space, time, matter and information – is the entire world, for example, a quantum hologram? black hole, Leonard Susskind, space-time, Einstein, Hawking, complementarity, uncertainty principle, holographic principle, string theory,

Galileo’s campaign on behalf of the modern view of the solar system is one of the most dramatic events in the history of relations between Christianity and science – endlessly portrayed as a battle between theological interests and scientific freedom. But this traditional story is filled with factual errors. And when human fears, rivalries, revenge and the like are taken into account, the story takes on an altogether different cast. In Professor Lindberg’s retelling, the ideological side of the story will be balanced with its richness as a human event. Florentine Heretic, Galileo, church, cosmos, religion, science, theology, geocentric, heliocentric, astronomy

Are you ready for this upgrade? The very foundation of computer science is changing. As Moore\'s Law draws to a close, rules of quantum physics are taking over. Learn how leading researchers are using counterintuitive effects, such as superposition, in their quest to build ultra-powerful quantum computers. You\'ll see how quantum particles behave, are controlled and, ultimately, used to calculate. quantum world, Raymond Laflamme, quantum mechanics, quantum information, quantum computing, information processing, Moore\'s Law, quantum scale, complexity theory, cryptography, qubits, quantum bits, quantum states, nuclear magnetic resonance, Turing

Do you have to see it to believe it? James Robert Brown, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, will discuss the highly interesting but controversial topic of the legitimate role of visual thinking in mathematics and science. Examples of picture proofs and thought experiments will be given. An explanation of how they work will be sketched. Proof, pictures, James Brown, axioms, sketches, experiment, Barwise, Godel, isomorphc homomorphic, intuitions, continuum hypothesis, refutation

For over three hundred years, physicists and mathematicians have been trying to understand how stable the Earth really is. Could gravitational forces from other planets lead to drastic changes in Earth’s orbit? Will we collide with other planets or be ejected into interstellar space? stability, solar systems, Scott Tremaine, Copernicus, Copernican principle, Kepler, Newton, motion, gravity, N-Body, dynamical system, Laplace, round off error, gravitational microlensing, MOSTorbit, chaos