The

University of Miami The University of Miami (UM, UMiami, Miami, U of M, and The U) is a private research university in Coral Gables, Florida. , the university enrolled 19,096 students in 12 colleges and schools across nearly 350 academic majors and programs, incl ...

Center for Theoretical Studies was established in 1965 under the direction of

Behram Kurşunoğlu Behram Kurşunoğlu (14 March 1922 – 25 October 2003) was a Turkish physicist and the founder and the director of the Center for Theoretical Studies, University of Miami. He was best known for his works on unified field theory, energy and ...

, with guidance from

J. Robert Oppenheimer J. Robert Oppenheimer (; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist. A professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is often ...

and with the support of the University's President

Henry King Stanford Henry King Stanford (April 22, 1916 – January 1, 2009) was the interim president of the University of Georgia (UGA) from 1986 through 1987 and the third president of the University of Miami from 1962 to 1981. Stanford's prior academic administ ...

. The purpose of the Center was to provide a forum for studies in theoretical physics and related fields, to be carried out by short term visitors, postdoctoral researchers, long term members of the Center, and various faculty of the University. Among others, the long term resident members of the Center included

Paul Dirac Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (; 8 August 1902 – 20 October 1984) was an English theoretical physicist who is regarded as one of the most significant physicists of the 20th century. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the Univer ...

(1969–1972) and

Lars Onsager Lars Onsager (November 27, 1903 – October 5, 1976) was a Norwegian-born American physical chemist and theoretical physicist. He held the Gibbs Professorship of Theoretical Chemistry at Yale University. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Che ...

(1972–1976), while the affiliated faculty included Physics Professors Arnold Perlmutter and Kursunoglu. Soon after being established, the Center assumed responsibility for the organization of the "Coral Gables Conferences" --- a series of winter scientific meetings on various topics, especially elementary particle physics. These meetings had already begun in January 1964, and continued through December 2003. The original series has now been superseded by the annual Miami physics conferences on elementary particles, astrophysics, and cosmology. From 1969 onwards the Center awarded the

J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize The J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize and Medal was awarded by the Center for Theoretical Studies, University of Miami, from 1969, until 1984. Established in memory of US physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the award consisted of a medal, certific ...

to recognize physics research.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell (; Bell; born 15 July 1943) is an astrophysicist from Northern Ireland who, as a postgraduate student, discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967. The discovery eventually earned the Nobel Prize in Physics in ...

was the 1978 recipient for her discovery of pulsars. Several other recipients of the J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize were later awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (specifically,

Sheldon Glashow Sheldon Lee Glashow (, ; born December 5, 1932) is a Nobel Prize-winning American theoretical physicist. He is the Metcalf Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Boston University and Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at Harvard U ...

Yoichiro Nambu was a Japanese-American physicist and professor at the University of Chicago. Known for his contributions to the field of theoretical physics, he was awarded half of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2008 for the discovery in 1960 of the mechanism ...

Frederick Reines Frederick Reines ( ; March 16, 1918 – August 26, 1998) was an American physicist. He was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics for his co-detection of the neutrino with Clyde Cowan in the neutrino experiment. He may be the only scientist in ...

Abdus Salam Mohammad Abdus Salam Salam adopted the forename "Mohammad" in 1974 in response to the anti-Ahmadiyya decrees in Pakistan, similarly he grew his beard. (; ; 29 January 192621 November 1996) was a Punjabi Pakistani theoretical physicist and a ...

, and

Steven Weinberg Steven Weinberg (; May 3, 1933 – July 23, 2021) was an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in physics for his contributions with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow to the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic interactio ...

). The inaugural recipient,

, was already a Nobel laureate. The Center was located on the University of Miami's campus in

Coral Gables, Florida Coral Gables, officially City of Coral Gables, is a city in Miami-Dade County, Florida. The city is located southwest of Downtown Miami. As of the 2020 U.S. census, it had a population of 49,248. Coral Gables is known globally as home to the ...

. It closed in 1992 on the retirement of Kursunoglu and was then officially disestablishedFaculty Senate Legislation #92021(B)
/ref> although the name was retained by the University for possible future use.

References

Theoretical physics University of Miami {{physics-org-stub