Loeb and Lee Lectures: 2000 -

For earlier lectures, see Loeb and Lee Lectures Archive: 1953 - 1999

2026-2026

  • Loeb Lecturer: Andrea Ghez (UCLA, 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics)
    "Our Galactic Center: A Unique Laboratory for the Physics & Astrophysics of Black Holes" (3 lectures: 10/6, 10/7, and 10/9)
  • Lee Historical Lecturer: Giorgio Parisi (La Sapienza;  2021 Nobel Prize in Physics)
    "Spin Glasses, Complexity and All That"
     

2024-2025

  • Lee Historical Lecturer: William D. Phillips (U Maryland, Co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics), "Time, Einstein, and the Coolest Stuff in the Universe" (4/22 and 4/23)

  • Loeb Lecturer: Steven Kivelson (Stanford)
    "Theory of superconductivity in the cuprate 'high temperature superconductors' − A progress report" (2/3/2025)
    "'Intertwined Orders' and the complex phase diagrams of highly correlated electronic systems" (2/5/2025)
    "Machine learning for sampling high-dimensional probability distributions in lattice field theory" (2/6/2025)
  • Loeb Lecturer: Phiala Shanahan (MIT)
    "The building blocks of the Universe: proton and nuclear structure from the Standard Model" (11/18/2024)
    "Aspects of the partonic structure of the proton from (lattice) QCD" (11/19/2024)
    "Machine learning for sampling high-dimensional probability distributions in lattice field theory" (11/21/2024)

2023-2024

  • Loeb Lecturer: Andre Geim (U Manchester)
    "Wonder Materials" (05/25/2024)
    "Exploring 2D Empty Space" (05/26/2024)
    "Science of flying frogs" 05/27/2024
  • Lee Historical Lecturer: Frank Wilczek (MIT, 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics)
    "My Life With QCD: A Fifty Year Love Affair That’s Still Going Strong" (04/09/2024)
  • Loeb Lecturer: Jean Dalibard (Collège de France)
    "Scale invariance, a hidden symmetry explored with quantum gases" (11/13/2023)
    "Surprises in soliton physics with quantum gas mixtures" (11/14/2023)
    "Is a zero-temperature Bose-Einstein condensate fully superfluid?" (11/15/2023)

2022-2023

  • Lee Historical Lecturer: Steven Chu (Stanford)
    "A random walk into laser cooling, optical trapping and beyond" (04/25/2023)
  • Loeb Lecturer: Asimina Arvanitaki (Perimeter Institute)
    "The Cosmic Neutrino Background (CνB): Its distribution on the surface of the Earth and its manipulation on laboratory scales" (03/20/2023)
    "The CνB on the Surface of the Earth" (03/21/2023)
    "A Diffraction Grating for the CνB" (03/22/2023)
  • Loeb Lecturer: M. Cristina Marchetti (UC Santa Barbara)
    "The Physics of Active Matter" (11/14/2022)
    "Dynamics of active fluid interfaces" (11/15/2022)
    "Rheology of dense biological tissue" (11/16/2022)

2021-2022

  • Lee Historical Lecturer: David Ruelle (IHES)
    "A Personal Historical View of the Theory of Deterministic Chaos" (4/5/2022)
  • Lee Historical Lecturer: Helen Quinn (SLAC)
    "A Window on Particle Physics at Harvard in the Early 1970’s" (11/17/2021)
  • Loeb Lecturer: Sara Seager (MIT)
    "Exoplanets and the Search for Atmospheric Biosignature Gases" (11/01/21)
    "Venus as Potentially Habitable Planet" (11/2/21)  
    "The Search for Another Earth" (11/3/21)

2020-2021

No lectures

2019-2020

  • Loeb Lecturer: Zhi-Xun Shen (Stanford)
    "Angle-Resolved Photoemission – a Many-Body Spectroscopy for Quantum Materials" (11/4/19)
    "Electronic Phase Diagram of Cuprate Superconductors – a Balancing Act" (11/5/19)  
    "Electronic Structure of Topological Materials" (11/6/19)
  • Loeb Lecturer: Yann LeCun (VP & Chief AI Scientist, Facebook; Silver Professor, NYU)
    "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Learning" (09/16/19)
    "The Energy-Based Formulation of Learning"  (09/17/19)
    "Intriguing Connections Between Deep Learning and Physics" (09/18/19)

2018-2019

  • Lee Historical Lecturer: Anton Zeilinger (U Vienna)
    "Quantum Information and Quantum Communication, Foundations and Prospects" (04/04/2019)
  • Loeb Lecturer: Donna Strickland (U Waterloo)
    "From Nonlinear Optics to High-Intensity Laser Physics" (03/04/19)
    "Investigation of Multi-Frequency Raman Generated Spectra" (03/05/19)
    "Two-Color CPA Laser Development for Nonlinear Optics" (03/06/19)
  • Loeb Lecturer: Jun Ye (JILA)
    "Quantum Matter and Atomic Clocks" (10/22/18)
    Lecture I: "Frequency Comb Spectroscopy – from Mid-IR to XUV" (10/23/18)
    Lecture II: "The Making of a Polar Molecule Quantum Gas" (10/24/18)

2017-2018

  • Lee Historical Lecturer: Rainer Weiss (MIT)
    "The Remarkable Gamble the National Science Foundation Took with LIGO" (04/23/2018)
  • Loeb Lecturer: Margaret Murnane (JILA)
    "Harnessing Quantum Light Science for Tabletop X-Ray Lasers, with Applications in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology" (04/10/18)
    "Capturing the Fastest Charge and Spin Dynamics in Nanosystems using Tabletop High Harmonic Beams" (04/11/18)
    "Coherent Imaging Using Coherent X-Ray Beams" (04/12/18)
  • Lee Historical Lecturer: Michael Berry (U Bristol)
    "Variations on a Theme of Aharonov and Bohm" (03/29/2018)

2016-2017

2015-2016

2014-2015

  • Loeb Lecturer: Brian P. Schmidt (The Australian National University)
    "Surveying the Southern Skies with the SkyMapper Telescope" (04/28/15)
    "The Accelerating Universe "(04/29/15)
    "After the Dark Ages: The First Stars" (04/30/15)
  • Lee Historical Lecturer: Steven Weinberg (U Texas)
    "Glimpses of a World Within" (12/01/14)

2013-2014

  • Loeb Lecturer: Marc Mézard (Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris)
    "The Spin Glass Cornucopia" (4/28/2014)
    "Phase Transitions in Hard Computer Science Problems" (04/29/2014)
    "Occam’s Razor in Massive Data Acquisition: a Statistical Physics Approach" (04/30/2014)
  • Lee Historical Lecturer: François Englert (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
    "The Brout-Englert-Higgs Mechanism and Its Scalar Bosons" (04/17/2014)

2012-2013

  • Lee Historical Lecturer: Roy J. Glauber (Harvard)
    "Recollections of Los Alamos and the Nuclear Era" (04/30/2013)
  • Loeb Lecturer: Fabiola Gianotti, (CERN)
    "Challenges and Accomplishments of the Large Hadron Collider" (04/22/2013)
    "Higgs Boson: A Very Special Discovery" (04/24/2013)
  • , Loeb Lecturer: Philip Kim (Columbia U)
    "Spin and Pseudospin in Graphene" (9/21/2012)
    "Bloch, Landau, and Dirac: Hofstadter's Butterfly in Graphene" (09/24/2012)
    "Materials in 2-Dimension and Beyond" (9/25/2012)

2011-2012

  • Lee Historical Lecturer: David Gross (KITP, UCSB)
    "A Century of Nuclear Physics: "From Rutherford to QCD and to String Theory" (4/17/2012)
  • Loeb Lecturer: John Clarke (UC Berkeley)
    "The Ubiquitous SQUID: Then and Now" (3/19/2012)
    "Magnetic Flux 1/f Noise: A 30-Year Saga" (3/20/2012)
    "Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Microtesla Fields: A New Clinical Modality?" (3/22/2012)
  • Loeb Lecturer: Theodor W. Hänsch (U Munich, Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics)
    "Laser Spectroscopy of Hydrogen" (3/5/2012)
    "The Proton Size Puzzle" (3/6/2012)
    " Lazer Frequency Combs" (3/8/2012)

2010-2011

  • Loeb Lecturer: Dam Thanh So (U Washington)
    "Viscosity, Quark Gluon Plasma, and String Theory "(4/18/2011)
    "Deconstructing Holographic Liquids" (4/19/2011)
    "Field Theoretical Methods for Non-relativistic Systems" (4/21/2011)
  • Lee Historical Lecturer: Dudley Herschbach (CCB, Harvard)
    "Molecular Beams in Chemical Physics" (3/9/2011)
  • Loeb Lecturer: Boris Shraiman (KITP, UCSB)
    "Unexpected Physics in Biology" (1/31/11)
    "Genetic 'Ensembles': Alleles versus Genotypes" (2/1/2011)
    "Sex, Survival and Adaptation" (2/3/2011)

2009-2010

  • Lee Historical Lecturer: M. Dresselhaus (MIT)
    "Historical Threads of Nanoscience" (date?)
  • Loeb Lecturer: Matthew P.A. Fisher (Caltech)
    "Quantum Crystals, Quantum Choreography and Quantum Computing" (3/1/2010)
    "Exotic Spin Liquids in Weak Mott Insulators" (3/2/2010)
    "Critical Quantum Fluids with d-wave Pair Correlations" (3/4/2010)
  • Loeb Lecturer: Daniel Eisenstein (U Arizona)
    "A New Decade of Cosmic Structure" (10/5/2009)
    "Lecture I: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations: A Robust and Precise Route to the Cosmological Distance Scale" (10/6/2009)
    "Lecture II: Observational probes of dark energy" (10/8/2009)

2008-2009

  • Loeb Lecturer: David Kaplan (U Washington)
    "Nuclear Physics from Effective Field Theory" (4/20/2009)
    "Conformality Lost" (4/21/2009)
    "Peering Beyond the Horizon with Axions" (4/23/2009)
  • Lee Historical Lecturer: Michael Tinkham (Harvard)
    "The Discovery of the Superconducting Energy Gap" (4/16/2009)
  • Loeb Lecturer: Ann Nelson (U Washington)
    "Beyond the Standard Model in the LHC Era" (3/30/2009)
    "SUSY Conformal Hidden Valley & Dark Matter" (3/31/2009)
  • Loeb Lecturer: J.C. Séamus Davis (Cornell & Brookhaven)
    "Exploring Complex Condensed Quantum Matter":
       - "Atomic Scale Visualization of Electronic Structure in Cuprates: From Mottness to Superconductivity" (12/4/2008)
       - "Complex Quantum Matter in Bosonic Crystals: A 'Superglass' State in Solid 4 He" (12/8/2008)
       - "Imaging the 'Fano Lattice'’ Signature of Heavy Fermion Formation via f-d Hybridization" (12/10/2008)
       - "Identification of the Cuprate Pseudogap State using Quasiparticle Interference Imaging" (12/11/2008)
  • Loeb Lecturer: Rashid Sunyaev (Max Planck Institute)
    "Clusters of Galaxies, Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation and Cosmology" (11/10/2008)
    "CMB Spectral Distortions Due to Energy Release in the Early Universe" (11/11/2008)
    "Interaction of CMB Photons with Hot Gas in the Clusters of Galaxies and Observational Consequences" (11/13/2008)

2007-2008

Lee Historical Lecturer: Daniel Kleppner (MIT)
"How Physics Became Precise" (4/16/08)

Loeb Lecturer: Marlan O. Scully (Texas A&M and Princeton)
"The Photon Sheds Light on the Quantum: Fluctuations and Correlations Tell the Story" (3/31/2008)
"Using Quantum Mechanics to Detect Anthrax" (4/2/2008)
"The Laser-Bec Analogy" (4/8/2008)

Loeb Lecturer: Steven M. Block (Stanford)
"Single Molecule Biophysics: Reading the Genetic Code" (2/25/2008)
"Single Molecule Biophysics: How Nucleic Acids Fold" (2/26/2008)
"Single Molecule Biophysics: How Kinesin Motors Move" (2/28/2008)

Loeb Lecturer: Don Eigler (IBM)
"There’s Plenty of Room in the Middle: A View from the Bottom" (12/10/2007)
"Computation in Nanometer-Scale Structures: Molecule Cascades" (12/11/2007)
"Classical Computation in Quantum Nanostructures: A Long Road to an Uncertain Future" (1/10/2007)

2006-2007

  • Lee Historical Lecturers: Douglas D. Osheroff (Stanford)
    "Probing the World Near Absolute Zero:  The Discovery of Superfluidity in Helium Three" (3/22/2007)
  • Loeb Lecturer: Rocky Kolb (U Chicago)
    "Taking Sides on the Dark Energy Issue" (12/11/2006)
    "Inflation and the Origin of Structure" (12/12/2006)
    "Dark Matters" (12/14/2006)
  • Loeb Lecturer: Eric Adelberger (U Washington)
    "Testing the Gravitational Inverse-Square Law below the Dark-Energy Length Scale" (11/6/2006)
    "Modern Tests of Einstein's Equivalence Principle" (11/7/2006)
    "Probes of Lorentz-Symmetry Violation and other Exotica using a Spin Pendulum" (11/9/2006)
  • Lee Historical Lecturer: Charles Slichter
    "The Flowering of Magnetic Resonance & Condensed Matter Physics--Some History, Ancient & in the Making" (4/11/2006)
  • Loeb Lecturer: Persis Drell (SLAC)
    "Quantum Universe" (3/20/2006)
    "GLAST: The Gamma Ray Large Area Telescope" (3/21/2006)
    "The Future of High Energy Physics: A Personal Perspective" (3/23/2006)
  • Loeb Lecturer: John Preskill (Caltech)
    "Putting Wierdness to Work: Quantum Information Science" (3/6/2006)
    "Battling Decoherence: The Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computer" (3/7/2006)
    "Topological Quantum Computation" (3/9/2006)
  • Loeb Lecturer: John Hopfield (Princeton)
    "A Physics View of Brain Computation" (11/28/2005)
    "The Dynamics of Spike-Timing Computation: Olfaction" (11/29/2005)
    "A Neural Approach to Recognizing Brief Dynamical Patterns: Speech" (12/1/2005)

2004-2005

  • Lee Historical Lecturer: P. James E. Peebles (Princeton)
    "The Expanding Universe" (4/20/2005)
  • Loeb Lecturer: Eli Yablonovitch (UCLA)
    "The End of the Semiconductor Roadmap: The Collision of Physics, Economics, and Sociology" (4/4/2005)
    "What Specific Physics will the End-of-Roadmap Technology Consist Of?" (4/7/2005)
    "What New Roadmap Concept Might Emerge Afterward?" (4/8/2005)
  • Loeb Lecturer: Marvin Cohen (UC Berkeley)
    "A Standard Model for Solids" (10/25/2004)
    "Nanoscience: Small is Sometimes Different" (10/27/2004)
    "Mostly Superconductivity" (10/28/2004)

2003-2004

  • Loeb Lecturer: Brian Greene (Columbia)
    "Searching for the Unified Theory" (4/26/2004)
    "String Theory and Geometry" (4/27/2004)
    "String Theory and Cosmology" (4/29/2004)
  • Lee Historical Lecturer: Freeman Dyson (Institute for Advanced Study)
    "How We Might Have Gone to Mars in 1965: History of Project Orion" (4/13/2004)
  • Loeb Lecturer: Georg Maret (University of Konstanz)
    "The Physics of Light Transport" (12/1/2003)
    "Multiple Light Scattering in Anisotropic Media: Principles and Applications" (12/2/2003)
    "Melting and Glass Transition in 2D Model Colloids" (12/4/2003)

2002-2003

  • Loeb Lecturer: H. Jeff Kimble (Caltech)
    "The new science of quantum information" (4/7/2003)
    "An overview of cavity quantum electrodynamics from Purcell and Casimir to the Era of strong coupling" (4/8/2003)
    "Quantum teleportation fact and fantasy" (4/10/2003)
    "Cavity QED the plumbing" (4/15/2003)
  • Lee Historical Lecturer: Richard L. Garwin (IBM Fellow Emeritus, Thomas J. Watson Research Center)
    "Fun with Muons, GPS, Radar, etc." (3/18/2003)
  • Loeb Lecturer: James P. Eisenstein (Caltech)
    "Surprises in Two Dimensions: From the Quantized Hall Effect to Exciton Condensation" (2/24/2003)
    "Liquid Crystals of Electrons?" (2/25/2003)
    "Evidence for a New Kind of Superfluid" (2/27/2003)
  • Loeb Lecturer: David DiVincenzo (IBM Watson Research Center)
    "Prospects for Quantum Computation" (9/30/2002)
    "Exchange Gates for Spin Qubits" (10/1/2002)​​​​​​​
    "The New Quantum Cryptography" (10/3/2002)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

2001-2002

  • Loeb Lecturer: John Carlstrom (U Chicago)
    "Cosmology with the Cosmic Microwave Background and the South Pole DASI Experiment" (dates?)
    "CMB Polarization and Future Directions"
    "Cosmology with the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect"
    "Probing the Dark Energy Equation of State with New SZE Surveys"
  • Loeb Lecturer: Steven Weinberg (U Texas)
    "Anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background: The Short Course" (4/29/2002)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
    "Cosmological Fluctuations: From Inflation through the Era of Radiation Dominance" (4/30/2002)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
    "Cosmological Fluctuations: From the Era of Matter Dominance to Now" (5/2/0202)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
  • Lee Historical Lecturer: Walter Kohn (UCSanta Barbara)
    "The Birth and Early Decades of Solid State Physics Remembered" (4/25/2002)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

2000-2001

  • Loeb Lecturer: Margaret Murnane (U Colorado)
    "Control of Atoms and Molecules Using Shaped Pulses" (3/19/2001)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
    "Direct Observation of Surface Chemistry Using Ultrafast Soft-X-Ray Pulses" (3/20/2001)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
    "Nonlinear Optics at Short Wavelengths" (3/22/2001)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
  • Lee Historical Lecturer: I.M. Khalatnikov (Honorary Director of Landau Institute, Academician, and Foreign Member of the Royal Society)
    "The Landau School and the Landau Institute" (2/20/2001)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
  • Lee Historical Lecturer: Sheldon Glashow (BU)
    "Half a Century of Particle Physics at Harvard" (11/20/2000)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
  • Loeb Lecturer: Joseph Polchinski (UC Santa Barbara)
    "String Duality and D-Branes" (10/2/2000)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
    "Gage/Gravity Duality" (10/3/2000)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
    "N = 1 Gauge/Gravity Duals, Part I" (10/5/2000)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
    "N = 1 Gauge/Gravity Duals, Part II" (10/10/2000)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
    "N = 1 Gauge/Gravity Duals, Part III" (10/12/2000)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
  • Loeb Lecturer: Lisa Randall (MIT)
    "New Dimensions to Einstein's Gravity":
    -  "Localizing Gravity"
    -  "Localized Gravity and the Weak Scale"
    -  "Locally Localized Gravity, Holography, and String Theory"
    -  "Holography, Phenomenology, and Model Building"

1999-2000

Loeb Lecturer: Ashoke Sen (Mehta Research Institute)
"Duality and Supersymmetry" (4/17/2000)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
"Non-Supersymmetric Configurations in Supersymmetric String Theories" - Lectures I-IV (4/18/2000 - 4/27/2000)

Lee Historical Lecturer: Charles Townes (UC Berkeley)
"The Sociology of Science Illustrated by Laser History" (3/1/2000)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Loeb Lecturer: Sidney Nagel (U Chicago)
"Physics at the Breakfast Table" (2/14/2000)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
"Exciting Granular Materials" (2/15/2000)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
"Jamming: From Glasses to Granular Matter" (2/17/2000)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
"Singularities and Cascades in Droplet Fission" (2/22/2000)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
"Breaking Away, Selective Withdrawal, and Islets in the Stream" (2/24/2000)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Loeb Long-Term Lecturer: Sebastien Balibar (l'Ecole Normale Supérieure)
"Crystal Surfaces: From Facets to Crystallization Waves" (10/18/1999)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
"Crystal Steps: Experimental Checks of a Renormalization Theory" (10/19/1999)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
"Nucleation: Bubbles, Crystals and Superfluids" (10/21/1999)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Loeb Lecturer: Stephen Hawking (U Cambridge)
"The Shape of Time" (9/27/1999)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
"Nuts, Bolts and Branes" (9/28/1999)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
"Finite But Unbounded" (10/5/1999)​​​​​​​​​​​​​​