The George Gamow Memorial Lectures are an annual series of lectures at the

University of Colorado Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado syst ...

, named in honor of the physicist and science popularizer

George Gamow George Gamow (March 4, 1904 – August 19, 1968), born Georgiy Antonovich Gamov ( uk, Георгій Антонович Гамов, russian: Георгий Антонович Гамов), was a Russian-born Soviet and American polymath, theoreti ...

, author of such popular science works as '' One Two Three... Infinity'' and the ''

Mr Tompkins Mr Tompkins is the title character in a series of four popular science books by the physicist George Gamow. The books are structured as a series of dreams in which Mr Tompkins enters alternative worlds where the physical constants have radically d ...

'' series. The lectures were established by Gamow's widow, Barbara Perkins Gamow, and the University's Department of Physics in 1971, to "promote public understanding of the nature and role of science." In 1975, Mrs. Gamow included in her will an endowment to maintain the lectures. The George Gamow lecturers have included 25

Nobel Laureates The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make ou ...

in the sciences. Lectures are held at the university's Macky Auditorium, and are free and open to the public. List of Gamow Lecturers * 1971

Victor Weisskopf Victor Frederick "Viki" Weisskopf (also spelled Viktor; September 19, 1908 – April 22, 2002) was an Austrian-born American theoretical physicist. He did postdoctoral work with Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Wolfgang Pauli, and Niels Boh ...

, theoretical physicist, on "What has society done for physics and what has physics done for society?" and "What is the proton made of?" * 1972

Eugene Wigner Eugene Paul "E. P." Wigner ( hu, Wigner Jenő Pál, ; November 17, 1902 – January 1, 1995) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who also contributed to mathematical physics. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his con ...

, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 1963, on "Symmetry Principles and Nature" * 1973

Geoffrey Burbidge Geoffrey Ronald Burbidge Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS (24 September 1925 – 26 January 2010) was an English people, English astronomy professor and theoretical astrophysicist, most recently at the University of California, San Diego. He wa ...

, astronomer * 1974

Marshall W. Nirenberg Marshall Warren Nirenberg (April 10, 1927 – January 15, 2010) was an American biochemist and geneticist. He shared a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 with Har Gobind Khorana and Robert W. Holley for "breaking the genetic code" an ...

, Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 1968 * 1975

Ivar Giaever Ivar Giaever ( no, Giæver, ; born April 5, 1929) is a Norwegian-American engineer and physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973 with Leo Esaki and Brian Josephson "for their discoveries regarding tunnelling phenomena in solids". Gi ...

, Nobel Laure in Physics, 1973 and

Hans Bethe Hans Albrecht Bethe (; July 2, 1906 – March 6, 2005) was a German-American theoretical physicist who made major contributions to nuclear physics, astrophysics, quantum electrodynamics, and solid-state physics, and who won the 1967 Nobel Prize ...

, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 1967 * 1976 T. D. Lee, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 1957 * 1978

James Watson James Dewey Watson (born April 6, 1928) is an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist. In 1953, he co-authored with Francis Crick the academic paper proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. Watson, Crick and ...

, Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 1967 on the "RNA Tie Club" and

Lyman Spitzer Lyman Spitzer Jr. (June 26, 1914 – March 31, 1997) was an American theoretical physicist, astronomer and mountaineer. As a scientist, he carried out research into star formation, plasma physics, and in 1946, conceived the idea of telescop ...

, astronomer * 1979

Melvin Calvin Melvin Ellis Calvin (April 8, 1912 – January 8, 1997) was an American biochemist known for discovering the Calvin cycle along with Andrew Benson and James Bassham, for which he was awarded the 1961 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He spent most of hi ...

, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 1961 * 1980 Paul A. M. Dirac, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 1933 * 1981

Linus Pauling Linus Carl Pauling (; February 28, 1901August 19, 1994) was an American chemist, biochemist, chemical engineer, peace activist, author, and educator. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific top ...

, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 1954 and Peace, 1962 * 1982

Stanislaw Ulam Stanisław Marcin Ulam (; 13 April 1909 – 13 May 1984) was a Polish-American scientist in the fields of mathematics and nuclear physics. He participated in the Manhattan Project, originated the Teller–Ulam design of thermonuclear weapon ...

, mathematician * 1983 Paul B. McCready, engineer * 1984

Paul Berg Paul Berg (born June 30, 1926) is an American biochemist and professor emeritus at Stanford University. He was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1980, along with Walter Gilbert and Frederick Sanger. The award recognized their con ...

, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 1980 * 1985

Luis Walter Alvarez Luis Walter Alvarez (June 13, 1911 – September 1, 1988) was an American experimental physicist, inventor, and professor who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1968 for his discovery of resonance states in particle physics using the h ...

, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 1968 and

Walter Alvarez Walter Alvarez (born October 3, 1940) is a professor in the Earth and Planetary Science department at the University of California, Berkeley. He is most widely known for the theory that dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid impact, developed in c ...

, geologist * 1987

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 ...

, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 1979 and

Rosalyn Sussman Yalow Rosalyn Sussman Yalow (July 19, 1921 – May 30, 2011) was an American medical physicist, and a co-winner of the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (together with Roger Guillemin and Andrew Schally) for development of the radioimmunoassay ...

, Nobel Laureate in Physiology of Medicine, 1977 * 1989 Stephen Schneider, climatologist * 1990

Leon M. Lederman Leon Max Lederman (July 15, 1922 – October 3, 2018) was an American experimental physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988, along with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, for research on neutrinos. He also received the Wolf Pr ...

, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 1988 * 1991

Freeman Dyson Freeman John Dyson (15 December 1923 – 28 February 2020) was an English-American theoretical physicist and mathematician known for his works in quantum field theory, astrophysics, random matrices, mathematical formulation of quantum m ...

, theoretical physicist and Fang Li-Zhi, astrophysicist * 1992

Norman Myers Norman Myers (24 August 1934 – 20 October 2019) was a British environmentalist specialising in biodiversity and also noted for his work on environmental refugees. Biography Myers was born in Whitewell (Lancashire, then Yorkshire) and was r ...

, environmental scientist * 1993

Norman Foster Ramsey Jr. Norman Foster Ramsey Jr. (August 27, 1915 – November 4, 2011) was an American physicist who was awarded the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physics, for the invention of the separated oscillatory field method, which had important applications in the const ...

, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 1989 * 1994

Susan Solomon Susan Solomon (born January 19, 1956 in Chicago) is an American atmospheric chemist, working for most of her career at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In 2011, Solomon joined the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech ...

, atmospheric chemist * 1995

Eric Cornell Eric Allin Cornell (born December 19, 1961) is an American physicist who, along with Carl E. Wieman, was able to synthesize the first Bose–Einstein condensate in 1995. For their efforts, Cornell, Wieman, and Wolfgang Ketterle shared the Nobel ...

and

Carl Wieman Carl Edwin Wieman (born March 26, 1951) is an American physicist and educationist at Stanford University, and currently the A.D White Professor at Large at Cornell University. In 1995, while at the University of Colorado Boulder, he and Eric All ...

, who would share the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics and

Sylvia Earle Sylvia Alice Earle ( née Reade; born August 30, 1935) is an American marine biologist, oceanographer, explorer, author, and lecturer. She has been a National Geographic explorer-in-residence since 1998. Earle was the first female chief scien ...

, marine biologist * 1996 John Horner, paleontologist * 1997

Edward C. Stone Edward Carroll Stone (born January 23, 1936) is an American space scientist, professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology, and former director of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Biography Stone was born in Knoxvil ...

, rocket scientist, on "“The Search for Life Elsewhere" * 1998

Stanley B. Prusiner Stanley Benjamin Prusiner (born May 28, 1942) is an American Neurology, neurologist and biochemist. He is the director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Prusiner discovered prions, ...

, Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 1997, on "Prions – A New Paradigm in Biology and Medicine" * 1999

Robert Ballard Robert Duane Ballard (born June 30, 1942) is an American retired Navy officer and a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island who is most noted for his work in underwater archaeology: maritime archaeology and archaeology of ...

, oceanographer * 2000

Martin Rees Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 23 June 1942) is a British cosmologist and astrophysicist. He is the fifteenth Astronomer Royal, ...

Astronomer Royal Astronomer Royal is a senior post in the Royal Households of the United Kingdom. There are two officers, the senior being the Astronomer Royal dating from 22 June 1675; the junior is the Astronomer Royal for Scotland dating from 1834. The post ...

, on "Six Cosmic Numbers: Understanding the Beginning and the End" * 2001

Eric Kandel Eric Richard Kandel (; born Erich Richard Kandel, November 7, 1929) is an Austrian-born American medical doctor who specialized in psychiatry, a neuroscientist and a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the College of Physicians and Surge ...

, Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 2000, on "The Past, the Future and the Biology of Memory Storage" * 2002

Richard Zare Richard Neil Zare (born November 19, 1939, in Cleveland, Ohio) is the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science and a Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University. Throughout his career, Zare has made a considerable impact in physical ...

, chemist * 2003

Thomas Cech Thomas Robert Cech (born December 8, 1947) is an American chemist who shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Sidney Altman, for their discovery of the catalytic properties of RNA. Cech discovered that RNA could itself cut strands of RNA, ...

, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 1989, on "From Catalytic RNA to Howard Hughes" * 2004

Robert Kirshner Robert P. Kirshner (born August 15, 1949) is an American astronomer, Chief Program Officer for Science for the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the Clownes Research Professor of Science at Harvard University. Kirshner has worked in several ...

, astronomer and

Paul Sereno Paul Callistus Sereno (born October 11, 1957) is a professor of paleontology at the University of Chicago and a National Geographic "explorer-in-residence" who has discovered several new dinosaur species on several continents, including at sites ...

, paleontologist * 2006

Geoffrey Marcy Geoffrey William Marcy (born September 29, 1954) is an American astronomer. He was an early influence in the field of exoplanet detection, discovery, and characterization. Marcy was a professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berk ...

, astronomer * 2007

Lisa Randall Lisa Randall (born June 18, 1962) is an American theoretical physicist working in particle physics and cosmology. She is the Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of Science on the physics faculty of Harvard University. Her research includes the funda ...

, theoretical physicist, on "Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions" * 2008 Kerry Emmanuel, meteorologist * 2009 Joy Hirsch, neuroscientist * 2010

Richard Alley Richard Blane Alley (born 18 August 1957) is an American geologist and Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at Pennsylvania State University. He has authored more than 240 refereed scientific publications about the relationships between Earth's cryo ...

, geologist, on "Learning While Burning: Peak (Whale) Oil, Changing Climate and Our Future" * 2011

Frank Wilczek Frank Anthony Wilczek (; born May 15, 1951) is an American theoretical physicist, mathematician and Nobel laureate. He is currently the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Founding Direct ...

, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 2004, on "Anticipating a New Golden Age: A Vision and Its Fiery Trial at the Large Hadron Collider�

* 2012 Adam Riess, Adam G. Riess, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 2011, on "Supernovae and the Discovery of the Accelerating Univers

* 2013

Brian Greene Brian Randolph Greene (born February 9, 1963) is a American theoretical physicist, mathematician, and string theorist. Greene was a physics professor at Cornell University from 19901995, and has been a professor at Columbia University since 1 ...

, theoretical physicist, on "The Hidden Reality: From Unification to Multiverse" * 2014

David J. Wineland David Jeffrey Wineland (born February 24, 1944) is an American Nobel-laureate physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) physics laboratory. His work has included advances in optics, specifically laser-cooling trap ...

, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 2012, on "Quantum Computing and Schrödinger 's Ca

* 2015

Jane Goodall Dame Jane Morris Goodall (; born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall on 3 April 1934), formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, is an English primatologist and anthropologist. Seen as the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is best know ...

, primatologist, on "Sowing the Seeds of Hop

This lecture was held at the University's Coors Event Center due to popular demand. * 2016 Kip Thorne, Kip S. Thorne, who would win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2017, on "Probing the Warped Side of the Universe with Gravitational Waves: From the Big Bang to Black Holes�

* 2018

Vint Cerf Vinton Gray Cerf (; born June 23, 1943) is an American Internet pioneer and is recognized as one of " the fathers of the Internet", sharing this title with TCP/IP co-developer Bob Kahn. He has received honorary degrees and awards that include t ...

, computer scientist, on "Digital Preservation"

Frances Arnold Frances Hamilton Arnold (born July 25, 1956) is an American chemical engineer and Nobel Laureate. She is the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In ...

, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 2018, was to lecture on “Innovation by Evolution: Bringing New Chemistry to Life” but her lecture was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Video links to past Gamow Lectures: * Frank Wilczek
"Anticipating a New Golden Age: A Vision and Its Fiery Trial at the Large Hadron Collider"
* Adam G. Riess
"Supernovae and the Discovery of the Accelerating Universe"
* David Wineland
"Quantum Computing and Schrödinger 's Cat"
* Jane Goodall
"Sowing the Seeds of Hope"
* Kip Thorne
"Probing the Warped Side of the Universe with Gravitational Waves: From the Big Bang to Black Holes"
American science and technology awards Events in Colorado University of Colorado Boulder