    |
Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Series Brings famed Physicist to campusIt’s not every day that students at TCNJ have the chance to attend a class taught by a world-renowned physicist, best-selling author, and Grammy nominee. But on Friday, October 26, students in Associate Professor of Physics Thulsi Wickramasinghe’s class did just that. Teaching class that day was Lawrence M. Krauss, internationally recognized physicist and director of the Center for Education and Research in Cosmology and Astrophysics at Case Western Reserve University. Krauss was on TCNJ’s campus October 25–26 as part of the Phi Beta Kappa (PBK) Visiting Scholars Program. This is the first year that the College was able to participate in the program, after receiving a PBK chapter last spring.
Besides teaching the physics class during his visit, Krauss also met with students and faculty and presented two campus-wide lectures. While guest lecturing in Wickramasinghe’s physics class Friday morning, Krauss addressed the topics of cosmology and climate change. He stressed the importance of taking initiatives to address global warming, warning that waiting even 20 years could be “catastrophic.” Having just returned from a trip to China the week before, Krauss said that it is interesting to see what other countries are doing to decrease energy consumption. He said that the best way to address global warming is on a global scale, with all countries working together. “There’s no example to date of all humanity working toward a common goal,” Krauss said. But Krauss is optimistic that in the next decade the seriousness of global warming will “provoke some responsibility.” He feels that to incite this global effort the U.S. should “act now,” taking the initiatives to set an example for other countries. “It is in everyone’s interest to resolve this problem,” Krauss told the students in the class. “It will be good for our economy if we became the leaders in not only energy conservation efforts but also energy consumption,” Krauss said. In his lecture Thursday night, “Science under Attack, from the White House to the Classroom: Public Policy, Science Education, and the Emperor’s New Clothes,”Krauss discussed the theory of intelligent design versus evolution. He criticized intelligent design, arguing that it’s “simply opposed to evolution,” and adding his belief that scientists need to play a role in defending science and dismissing “public misconceptions.” After teaching the Friday morning physics class, Krauss delivered his second campus-wide lecture, “Einstein’s Biggest Blunder? A Cosmic Mystery Story.” Talking to a packed house in the library auditorium, Krauss discussed how Einstein’s conceptualization of the so-called cosmological constant is not useful in accounting for observations of the universe on large scales. The purpose of the PBK visiting scholar program is, according to PBK’s Web site, to contribute to the intellectual life of a campus by making possible an exchange of ideas between the visiting scholar and the resident faculty and students. Certainly such an exchange of ideas occurred between Krauss and senior political science major Daniel Beckelman. Beckelman, an officer in TCNJ’s College Republicans club, said that Krauss’s views on global warming differ from his own, but he was still able to appreciate the visit. When Krauss lectured the physics class, Beckelman was in attendance and asked Krauss questions about energy consumption. “I liked that, even though [Krauss] is more liberal than I am, he was rational in his disagreements,” Beckelman said. Krauss, author of over 250 scientific publications as well as numerous popular articles on physics and astronomy, is elected fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In addition to his best-selling book, The Physics of Star Trek, he has made numerous television and radio appearances, played for the Cleveland Orchestra, was nominated for a Grammy for his |
