Leigh Page Prize Lectures

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 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.

Started in 1967

• 2024 (April): Charles Kane, University of  Pennsylvania - April 23, “The Emergence of Topological Quantum Matter”; April 24, “Symmetry, Topology and Electronic Phases of Matter”; and April 25, “Topology of the Fermi Sea”. Talk abstracts
• 2021 (March-April): Juan Maldacena, Institute for Advanced Study - March 22, “Black Holes and the Structure of Spacetime” (slides); March 29, “Wormholes and entanglement” (slides); and April 5, “The entropy of Hawking radiation” (slides)
• 2019 (April): Raymond E. Goldstein, University of Cambridge - April 29, “Stirring Tails of Evolution”; April 30, “Individual and Collective Dynamics of Active Matter”; and May 1, “Upside-Down and Inside-Out: Biomechanics of Cell Sheet Folding”
• 2018 (April): Nergis Mavalvala, MIT - April 23, “The Warped Universe: the one hundred year quest to discover Einstein’s gravitational waves and April 24, “Future directions in gravitational wave detection”
• 2016 (May): John Preskill, California Institute of Technology - May 3, “Quantum Computing and the Entanglement Frontier”; May 4, “Quantum Information and Spacetime”; and May 5, “Holographic Quantum Codes”
• 2015 (February): Fabiola Gianotti , CERN - Feb. 23, “Foundations and Implications of the Higgs Boson Discovery” and Feb. 25, “The Future of High Energy Colliders”
• 2014 (April): Dam T. Son, University of Chicago - Apr. 7, “Fluid viscosity: from Maxwell to string theory”; Apr. 8, “Spacetime symmetries in quantum Hall effect”; and Apr. 9, “Quantum anomalies and kinetic theory”
• 2012 (April): Nima Arkani-Hamad, Institute for Advanced Study - Apr. 16, “The future of fundamental physics”; Apr. 17, “Why is there a macroscopic universe?”; and Apr. 18, “Space-time and quantum mechanics in the 21st century”
• 2009 (September): John Mather, NASA - Sept. 28, “How did the Universe make people? A brief history of the Universe, from the beginning to the end”; Sept. 29, “Progress on the James Webb Space Telescope - Successor to the Hubble Space Telescope”; and Sept. 30, “Basic physics questions addressed by astrophysics” - Lecture Notes: Sept. 28 | Sept. 29 | Sept. 30
• 2009 (April): Carlo Beenakker, Instituut-Lorentz for Theoretical Physics, Leiden University - “Mesoscopic Physics of Graphene”: April 20, “What is Special about Graphene?”; Apr. 22, “Relativity Meets Superconductivity in Graphene”; and Apr. 24, “Majorana Fermions in Graphene and Topological Insulators”
• 2007: Roger Blandford, Kavli Institute of Partical Astrophysics and Cosmology - Apr. 25, “The High Energy Universe”; Apr. 26, “Introducing GLAST (Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope)”; and Apr. 27, “On the Origin of Cosmic Rays”
• 2006: Michael Peskin, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center - April 5, “Dark Matter: What is it? Where is it? Can we make it in the Lab?”; Apr. 6, “Supersymmetry: The Next Spectroscopy?”; and Apr. 7, “The Quantitative Analysis of Invisible Particles”
• 2005: Alan H. Guth, Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Apr. 12, “Cosmic Inflation and the Accelerating Universe”;  Apr. 14, “Eternal Inflation”;  and Apr. 15, “Time Travel and Cosmic Strings: a Playground for Theoretical Physicists”
• 2004: Kathryn Moler, Stanford University - Apr. 12, “Quantum Mechanics of Nanostructures”; Apr. 14, “Superconductivity”; and Apr. 16, “Spin-Charge Separation”
• 2003: R.G. Hamish Robertson, University of Washington - Apr. 14, “A Place for the Sun in the Neutrino”; Apr. 16, “If they have mass, why can’t you tell me what it is?”; and Apr. 17, “Neutrinos: The Road Ahead”
• 2002: Saul Perlmutter, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Mar. 26, “Supernovae, Dark Energy, and the Accelerating Universe”; Mar. 27, “Dark Energy Challenges the Physicists”; and Mar. 29, “Studying Dark Energy with “Supernovae (The part of the story that always gets left out of departmental colloquia)” “
• 2000: Jan Jolie, Universität Köln - Nov. 6, ”The atomic nucleus: quantum mechanics at work”; Nov. 9, ”Symmetries, more than a tool”; and Nov. 10, “Attacking complexity with supersymmetry”
• 1998: David Gross, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, UCSB
• 1997: Hörst Störmer, Bell Labs
• 1995: David T. Wilkinson, Princeton University
• 1994: Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Collège de France
• 1992: Eric Adelberger, University of Washington
• 1991: Norman Ramsey, Harvard University
• 1990: Jack Steinberger, Columbia University
• 1989: Lev B. Okun, Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics, Russia
• 1988 (Fall): Klaus von Klitzing, Max Planck Institute for Solid State Physics, Stuttgart, Germany
• 1988 (Spring): Hans Dehmelt, University of Washington
• 1987: John Schwarz, California Institute of Technology
• 1986: Arthur C. Gossard, University of California, Santa Barbara
• 1985 (December): Arthur Schawlow, Stanford University
• 1985 (April): Mitchell Feigenbaum, Rockefeller University
• 1983: Carlo Rubbia, CERN
• 1982: Willis E. Lamb, Jr., University of Arizona
• 1981: Gerard ‘t Hooft, Utrecht
• 1980: Valentine Telegdi, CERN
• 1976: Louis Michel
• 1975: William A. Fowler, California Institute of Technology
• 1974: William M. Fairbank, Stanford University
• 1973: Edward M. Purcell, Harvard University
• 1971: Eugene P. Wigner, Princeton University
• 1970: Anatole Abragam, Collège de France
• 1968: Robert H. Dicke, Princeton University
• 1967: Murray Gell-Mann, California Institute of Technology