"Reflections" reflects on history, scientific responsibility

As part of its 60th Anniversary celebration, the Laboratory is participating in an educational outreach event on Saturday that should give unique insight and provide contemporary context for the controversial play "Copenhagen," to be presented by Santa Fe Stages at the Lensic Performing Arts Center later that evening.

The play is based on an actual significant historical event when physicists from opposite sides of World War II, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, met in Copenhagen, Denmark. The principles and responsibilities of scientists to society and other topics discussed in the play continue to be major concerns that require constant vigilance — as much today as in the 1940's time frame portrayed by Copenhagen.

Reflections, the presentation in which the Laboratory is participating, will include audiotape excerpts from J. Robert Oppenheimer's speech on Bohr, recorded in 1964 at Los Alamos, and video excerpts from a tape made several years ago with Hans Bethe. That videotape preceded the New York production of Copenhagen. The tapes will be followed by presentations by three prestigious scientists knowledgeable of Bohr, Heisenberg, the science and politics of the time, and the critical role science plays now and in our future.

The panelists include:

Brian Schwartz, is a professor of physics and vice president for research and sponsored programs at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Schwartz spent 12 years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a researcher and faculty member and 10 years as administrator at Brooklyn College. In March 2002, he was responsible for organizing a symposium at the Smithsonian Institution associated with the touring company of the play Copenhagen. An earlier symposium entitled Creating Copenhagen was held at the Graduate Center in March 2000 just prior to the play opening on Broadway. He has edited eight books and published more than 120 scientific and educational articles. Schwartz is now producing a new musical based on the novel "Einstein's Dreams" by Alan Lightman for the professional stage.

David Pines, is a founding co-director of the Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter, a multi-campus research program of the University of California; a staff member in the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos; and research professor of physics and professor emeritus of physics and electrical and computer engineering in the Center for Advanced Study, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His seminal contributions to the theory of many-body systems and to theoretical astrophysics have been recognized by two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Feenberg Medal, Friemann, Dirac, and Drucker Prizes, and by his election to the National Academy of Sciences, American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Russian Academy of Sciences, and Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1996), and visiting professorships at the Universite de Paris, University of Leiden, College de France, Caltech and Trinity College, University of Cambridge.

George Cowan, Laboratory Senior Fellow Emeritus, recipient of the 2002 Los Alamos Medal, and founding president and currently Distinguished Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. His association with nuclear research began in 1941 with Eugene Wigner's research team at Princeton University which helped demonstrate the feasibility of a graphite moderated uranium reactor. In 1942 he joined Enrico Fermi's Manhattan Project group at the University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory and contributed to the crash development of processes to make pure uranium for the first reactor at Stagg Field. Cowan came to Los Alamos in late 1945 and went overseas to participate in the first test of atomic bombs against naval vessels at Bikini Atoll. On completion of doctoral studies at Carnegie Tech in 1949 he returned to Los Alamos and helped verify the Soviet Union's test of its first atomic bomb. During his long career at Los Alamos he earned numerous awards and honors, including the E.O. Lawrence and Enrico Fermi awards.

Interim Laboratory Director G. Peter Nanos will introduce Reflections at 3:30 p.m. at the Lensic Performing Arts Center. The panel will end at 5:30 p.m. The distinguished panel members and other senior scientists will remain following the presentations for individual or small group discussion with audience members who wish to further explore the ideas presented.

Sponsors of Reflections include La Fonda, Los Alamos National Bank's Santa Fe branch, Los Alamos National Laboratory Foundation, the Los Alamos National Laboratory's 60th Anniversary Committee, Nicolas C. Metropolis Mathematics Foundation and Santa Fe Stages.

Reflections is free and open to the public.

-- Linn Tytler

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