Meeting Information

Supersymmetry

September 21, 2016
The American Center for Physics
College Park, MD

Date: Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Speaker: S. James Gates, UMD

Topic: Supersymmetry

Time and Location: 1:00 p.m., with Q&A to follow; in a 1st floor conference room at the American Center for Physics (www.acp.org), 1 Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD - off River Rd., between Kenilworth Ave. and Paint Branch Parkway.

Abstract: Now that the existence of one Higgs boson has been well established experimentally, precision measurements of properties of other particles have the potential to spot the first evidence of "Supersymmetry" by finding signs of at least one other Higgs boson.

Biography: Sylvester James "Jim" Gates, Jr. received two B.S. degrees and a Ph.D. degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His doctoral thesis was the first thesis at MIT to deal with supersymmetry. Gates currently serves on the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) and the Maryland State Board of Education (MD-BoE). He is past president of the National Society of Black Physicists, and a NSBP Fellow, as well as a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Institute of Physics in the U.K. He is known for his work on supersymmetry, supergravity, and superstring theory. In 1984, working with M.T. Grisaru, M. Rocek, W. Siegel, Gates co-authored Superspace, the first comprehensive book on the topic of supersymmetry. In 2006, he released, the book L'arte della Fisica (The Art of Physics), and has authored over 200 scientific publications.

Prof. Gates has been featured on many documentary programs on physics.and has received many awards in recognition of his work. Notably, in 2013, President Obama awarded him the National Medal of Science, the highest recognition given by the U.S. to scientists with the citation, “For his contribution to the mathematics of supersymmetry in particle, field, and string theories and his extraordinary efforts to engage the public on the beauty and wonder of fundamental physics.”