Past Events

Abstract

This talk is addressed to the general public. It explains the history and the type of organisation used at CERN, which led over a long and persistent effort to the success of fundamental research for exploring some of the fundamental laws of nature as well as to some technological breakthroughs, while being profitable from an economical point of view. It emphasises that the general methodology and international politics introduced by CERN can be generalised to solve other big and long term questions, such as climate, malnutrition, water access, and, in general, to specific non-trivial technological questions. It explains the new methods of human organisation policy that helped to develop the necessary European global collaborations, even between countries sometimes embedded in momentary geopolitical conflicts and often, with historical conflicting past. The talk also explains some of the fundamental discoveries of CERN and sketches in a pedagogical way our present understanding of the microscopic properties of our gigantic Universe and some of the mysteries of quantum gravity.

About the Speaker

Prof. Laurent Baulieu is currently a CNRS Director de Recherche at LPTHE, Sorbonne Université and Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France and a UNESCO Chair in Paris. He studied in Ecole Normale Supérieure and was afterward a fellow at Harvard University and Columbia University. He taught Theoretical Physics for many years in the Ecole Polytechnique In Paris. He is the author of about 200 publications in the domains of Particle Theory and various domains of Quantum Field Theory. He recently published an extensive text book at Oxford University Press “From Classical to Quantum Field Theory” written in collaboration with John Iliopoulos and Roland Seneor.

Coffee and tea will be served 20 minutes prior to the lecture.
Anyone interested is welcome to attend.