2:30 - 3:00 Refreshments
3:00 - 4:00 Lecture
Bldg 1128 Conference Center (Steve Mittleman x4038)

"STOPPING TIME"
Prof. Eric Mazur, Professor of Physics, Harvard University

ABSTRACT

Time is of philosophical interest and is also the subject of mathematical and scientific research. Even though it is one of the most familiar concepts, the passage of time remains one of the greatest enigmas of the universe. The Platonist Augustine has said: 'What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who who asks me, I do not know.' The concept time can indeed not be explained in simple terms. Emotions, life and death all are related to our interpretation of the irreversible flow of time. The more we think about it, however, the more unclear the concept of time becomes.

After a short introduction on the concept of time, I will review historical attempts at 'stopping time', i.e. capturing events of very short duration. In the last part of this talk we will present an overview of current research of the shortest directly observable processes using ultrafast lasers.

BIOGRAPHY

Eric Mazur holds a triple appointment as Harvard College Professor, Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics, and Professor of Physics at Harvard University. An
internationally recognized scientist and researcher, he leads a vigorous research
program in optical physics and supervises one of the largest research groups in the
Physics Department at Harvard University.

Dr. Mazur has made important contributions to spectroscopy, light scattering, and studies of electronic and structural events in solids that occur on the femtosecond time scale. In 1988 he was awarded a Presidential Young Investigator Award. In 2001 Mazur
was awarded one of the first NSF Director's Distinguished Teaching Scholar award, the
NSF highest honor. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and has been
named APS Centennial Lecturer during the Society's centennial year. Dr. Mazur has held
appointments as Visiting Professor or Distinguished Lecturer at the University of
Leuven in Belgium, National Taiwan University in Taiwan, Carnegie Mellon University, and Hong Kong University. Dr. Mazur is author or co-author of more that 120
scientific publications.