Date: Wednesday October 24, 2012
Time: 6:45 – 8:00 pm
Venue: Rayson Huang Theatre (Main venue)
(Webcasting in other venues will be available)

Abstract
We live in a world in which many issues, possibly most, have a technological component. It is no longer sufficient for world leaders to master the traditional areas of politics, economics, business and diplomacy; they must understand science. The lecture will describe a new way to teach science to future world leaders based on emphasis of issues that are evidently important. These will include the physics of terrorism and counter-terrorism; nuclear weapons, nuclear accidents, and cancer; space and satellites, energy and alternative energy, and global warming. This is not diluted science, but tough top-level science, science that can and must be mastered by not only our leaders but by the people who elect them.

About the Speaker
Professor Richard Muller is professor of physics at University of California, Berkeley. His proudest achievements: discovery of the non-uniformity of the radiation from the Big Bang; invention of AMS, now adopted around the world as the most sensitive method of radioisotope dating; Nemesis theory of a companion star to the sun; creation of a supernova discovery program that led to the discovery of dark energy; lunar soil analysis; author of a technical book on glacial cycles and climate change. His course “Physics for Future Presidents” was twice voted “Best Class at Berkeley” and has been watched on YouTube in ninety countries. He is currently leading the “Berkeley Earth” study making a new evaluation of global warming.

Professor Muller has been awarded the MacArthur Prize, the NSF Waterman Award, the Texas Instruments Founders Prize, and numerous teaching awards. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His most recent book is Energy for Future Presidents.

For enquiries, please mail to commoncore@hku.hk or call 2219 4957.

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