The remarkable manner in which nature has found nearly perfect solutions to survival problems will be discussed at a free public lecture Wednesday, July 18, at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Princeton University physics Professor William Bialek will present "More Perfect Than We Imagined: A Physicist's View of Life" at 7 p.m. in Duane Physics, room G1B20.
During his talk Bialek will explore how all living organisms must contend with the laws of physics in their fight to survive, and how many of them actually perform very near these physical limits. He will talk specifically about bacteria, flies, bats and humans and the problems they solve to survive.
Bialek is the John Archibald Wheeler/Battelle Professor in Physics at Princeton and is most interested in the interface between physics and biology. His presentation is part of the eighth annual Boulder Summer School for Condensed Matter and Material Physics, which is hosted by CU-Boulder and supported by a $1.36 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The school runs from July 2 to July 27. "Biophysics" is this year's theme.
The Boulder Summer School enables advanced graduate students to work at the frontiers of science and technology by exposing them to a range of concepts, techniques and applications much broader than any single graduate program or postdoctoral apprenticeship can provide, according to CU-Boulder physics Professor Leo Radzihovsky.
Radzihovsky co-founded the school with Steven Girvin of Yale University, Matthew Fisher of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara and Andy Millis of Columbia University.
Each year the school invites 65 students from all over the world who are working on the school's current topic. Students come to Boulder for a four-week study of advanced materials presented by 20 to 25 international scientific experts in the field.
For more information about the July 18 talk, call (303) 492-5436.