The Aspen Center for Physics is a non-profit Center for research in Physics based in

Aspen, Colorado Aspen is a home rule municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Pitkin County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 7,004 at the 2020 United States Census. Aspen is in a remote area of the Rocky Mounta ...

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. The Center organizes workshops and conferences to facilitate interactions among research physicists. The Center was founded in 1962 by

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and money ...

postdoctoral fellow George Stranahan (later known for owning-operating the Flying Dog cattle ranch and co-founding the

Flying Dog Brewery Flying Dog Brewery is a craft brewery located in Frederick, Maryland. It was founded in 1990 by George Stranahan and is the largest brewery in Maryland. As of 2017, Flying Dog is the 28th largest craft brewery in the United States. History A p ...

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

professor Michael Cohen and

Aspen Institute The Aspen Institute is an international nonprofit organization founded in 1949 as the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. The institute's stated aim is the realization of "a free, just, and equitable society" through seminars, policy programs ...

director Robert W. Craig. While working on his doctoral dissertation at the

Carnegie Institute of Technology Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

in 1957, Stranahan first moved to Aspen, where he enjoyed the mountainous surroundings and fishing. Following this experience, he was motivated to establish the center as a retreat for physicists.

Program

During the Summer Program, late–May through mid–September, the Center provides individual researchers and small working groups with double offices and campus activities for over 500 leading scientists. Ten to thirteen informal workshops of two– to five–weeks in the areas of biophysics, astrophysics and cosmology, particle physics, and condensed matter physics are also scheduled, but the most important aspect of attendance is the cross–fertilization of ideas that spontaneously arises during one–on–one conversations and across fields. Participants include post–doctoral fellows, professors, researchers and experimentalists. More than sixty of the Nobel Prize recipients in physics have participated in Aspen. Housing expenses are partially underwritten by the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

. Families often accompany participants. The Winter Conferences in January, February and March consist of specific and intensive week long conferences. Each week, fifty to a hundred participants meet daily for talks at the Center, share a block of hotel rooms and eat meals together, totally immersing in the subject of study.

Outreach

The Center offers free public lectures during both summer and winter sessions, bringing cutting–edge research to the interested non–scientist. With the Aspen Science Center, the Aspen Center for Physics also hosts summer barbecues for local and visiting youth who come with their families to picnic and hear an entertaining and informative physics talk. The Physics Cafe held before the winter lectures offers students and adults an opportunity to talk informally with physicists. The Center also hosts conversational dialogues, conducts interviews on local access television (Grassrootstv.org “Physics Preview”) and radio (″Radio Physics″ with high school students on KDNK), offers opportunities for high school physics students to engage with participants, and provides a science resource for schools and youth organizations.

References

Aspen, Colorado Physics institutes 1962 establishments in Colorado Theoretical physics institutes {{Physics-org-stub