Public Lectures

Apart from Einstein, Paul Dirac was probably the greatest theoretical physicist of the twentieth century. Dirac, co-inventor of the most revolutionary theory for 150 years 'quantum mechanics' is now best known for conceiving of anti-matter in his head and also for his deeply eccentric behaviour. For him, the most important attribute of a fundamental theory was its mathematical beauty, an idea that he said was 'almost a religion' to him. In this talk, Farmelo will argue that this obsession originated in his early life and training as an engineer and mathematician. An examination of Dirac's character will show why he was sometimes called 'the strangest man' in the modern history of physics.

With a background in computer and systems engineering as well as language processing and automatic speech recognition, Ms. Payette was selected from a pool of 5,330 candidates to become a Canadian astronaut, focusing on technical issues in robotics. Today, following her amazing professional career and numerous life experiences, Ms. Payette is veteran of two missions to the International Space Station as a crew member and Flight Engineer. She also holds a commercial pilot license; earned military pilot captaincy on the 'Snowbird' jets; is a certified deep-sea diving suit operator; is fluent in French and English, and can converse in Spanish, Italian, Russian and German. She has received many awards, holds numerous degrees and, on a personal note, plays the piano and has sung with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Piacere Vocale in Basel, Switzerland, and the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra in Toronto. Drawing from her many firsthand experiences and zest for life, Ms. Payette will share an astronaut's high level perspective on extraordinarily complex, yet highly collaborative, challenges in space - from both a research and international diplomacy policy point of view.