APS Senior Physicists Group
The Senior Physicists Group (formerly the Mid Atlantic Senior Physicists Group) was established in 1997 at the American Physical Society and has since grown to over 130 members.
Membership in the Senior Physicists Group (SPG) is free and is open to any APS member who is interested and who wants to join and participate. The group meets on the third Wednesday of most months, except in August.
Want to join the APS Senior Physicist mailing list to stay updated on upcoming seminars? Please fill out this form.
To view many of our past seminar recordings, please visit the APS Senior Physicist Group Youtube Playlist.
APS SPG Planning Group activities
The SPG planning group makes the arrangements and plans for the SPG's future events. The planning group is open to any interested member, with about 12 members usually participating. The planning group meets on the first Wednesday of the month. To receive a Zoom link for any upcoming planning meetings, please contact the APS units team.
Meetings and events
The SPG hosts virtual and in-person events most months, usually a talk on a physics-related scientific topic or a tour of a facility with a scientific mission.
Starting in June, the SPG seminars will be held at the University of Maryland’s Physical Science Complex building, 415, but also available via Zoom. The address for the Physical Science building is: 4296 Stadium Dr., College Park, MD 20742. View a map of the UMD campus.
Upcoming events
May 21, 2025
Speaker: Melissa Hayes-Gehrke, Ph.D., of the UMD Astronomy Department
Register to Attend via Zoom: https://apsphysics.zoom.us/meeting/register/qsTMASEqSOSVAgTRSOoLeA
This meeting will take place at the American Center for Physics located at One Physics Ellipse Dr, College Park, MD 20740
History of the APS Senior Physicist Group
Since 1997, the SPG has arranged talks and tours on a wide range of topics, including discussions on the origin of the moon, chaos theory, Type 2 diabetes, various orbiting astronomical observatories, development of time standards, nanotechnology, quark physics, and cosmology.
Sites visited have included the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, David Taylor Model Basin, Naval Research Laboratory, NIST, Naval Observatory, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, the Cryptology Museum, NASA-Goddard, and the College Park Airport. The SPG's activities have also included a visit to the Escher exhibit at the National Gallery of Art, and group tickets for shows including Copenhagen at the Kennedy Center and for Galileo at the Circle Theater in Washington.
APS has supported the SPG since its founding, providing meeting space for the planning group as well as the talks. APS also notifies members of the SPG mailing list of upcoming events, and hosts the SPG website.
Past chairs
- Richard Strombotne, 1997–2019
- Jack Gaffey, 2019–2022
Contact
For more information about the SPG, contact SPG Chair Don Novotny.