The Yale Physics Leigh Page Prize Lectures for 2024 were given April 23, 24, and 25, 2024 by Charles Kane from the University of Pennsylvania. Charles Kane was chosen by the departmental Prize Lectures and Physics Club committee headed by Witold Skiba. The talks were hosted by Meng Cheng.
Charles Kane is the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Kane is a theoretical condensed matter physicist who is known for his work characterizing quantum electronic states of matter, including quantum Hall states, Luttinger Liquids, carbon nanotubes, and topological insulators. Recently his research has focused on the theory of topological insulators and their generalizations.
Kane received a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Chicago in 1985 and a Ph.D. in physics from MIT in 1989. After a postdoc period at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, he joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in 1991.
Kane is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. His work on topological insulators has been recognized by several awards, including the Oliver Buckley Prize (2012), the P.A.M. Dirac Medal (2012), the Benjamin Franklin Medal (2015), the Breakthrough Prize (2018), the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2019) and the Fudan-Zhongzhi Science Award (2020).
The Leigh Page Prize Lecture series are given each year by a distinguished physicist in honor of Leigh Page who received his PhD in Physics from Yale in 1913. He was later acting Chair and Director of the Sloane Physics Laboratory. Professor Page devoted his time to teaching (mostly graduate classes), research, and writing several textbooks. Since 1967, several speakers in the Leigh Page Prize Lecture series have later received Nobel Prizes and other and notable awards. In connection with the lecture series, a prize is offered to first year graduate students in recognition of their fine academic record and for the promise of important contributions to the field of physics.