Beyond the movie “Oppenheimer” is the remarkable history of the development of atomic bombs at Los Alamos, New Mexico, led by physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.

In this informal and non-technical talk, Aspen Center for Physics physicist Dr. Gordon Baym will discuss the historical setting, the establishment of Los Alamos, the basic science of nuclear weapons, and the involvement of the American scientific community in the project, as well as Oppenheimer himself as a scientist.

Gordon Baym is a graduate of Cornell University and received his Ph.D. from Harvard. He spent two years at the Institut for Teoretisk Fysik in Copenhagen (now the Niels Bohr Institute). He is presently a Research Professor of Physics, Center for Advanced Study Professor Emeritus, and Fisher Distinguished Professor of Engineering Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.

His interests in physics range from quantum statistical mechanics to matter at low temperatures and under extreme conditions. A pioneer in the study of pulsars and neutron stars, he has been a driver in laboratory studies of density matter via ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions. His ongoing interests include quark matter, primordial neutrinos and the intersection of low temperature and high energy physics.

He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society. He is a recipient of the American Physical Society Hans Bethe Prize and Lars Onsager Prize, the Eugene Feenberg Memorial Medal, and the 2021 American Physical Society Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research. His continuing service to the physics community lately includes chairing the National Academy of Sciences study of the Electron-Ion Collider.

He has been a regular participant at the Aspen Center for Physics (https://aspenphys.org/) since 1967 and we thank the Center for Physics for lending us Dr. Baym for the afternoon.

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