Fermi Institute’s 56th Compton Lecture Series to tackle science of exotic, extreme universe

Students and the public alike can learn about the science of our violent, extreme and exotic universe in a series of free, public lectures at the University beginning Saturday, Oct. 5.

The series of 10 lectures, titled “Pursuit of the New Messengers: Astrophysics in the Extreme Universe,” will be held Saturday mornings from 11 a.m. to noon beginning Oct. 5 in Room 106 of the Kersten Physics Teaching Center, 5720 S. Ellis Ave.

Scott Wakely, a Research Scientist in the University’s Enrico Fermi Institute and Associate Fellow in the Center for Cosmological Physics, will deliver the lectures. Wakely received his B.A. in Physics from Chicago in 1993 and his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Minnesota in 1999.

Specializing in high-energy astroparticle physics, he works on several projects that examine high-energy cosmic particles and extreme processes in nature.

Wakely’s talks are the 56th series of the Arthur Holly Compton Lectures, sponsored each fall and spring by the Fermi Institute.

Compton was a Chicago physicist and a Nobel laureate, best known for demonstrating that light has the characteristics of both a wave and a particle. He also organized the effort to produce plutonium for the atomic bomb and directed the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University, where Enrico Fermi and his colleagues produced the first controlled nuclear chain reaction in 1942.

The lectures are intended to make science accessible to a general audience and to convey the excitement of new discoveries in the physical sciences. Previous topics have ranged from the smallest fundamental particles to the history of the universe.

All of the lectures are free and open to the public. For more information, call (773) 702-7823.