Aspen Center for Physics

Physics research institute

Aspen Center for Physics

Founders|

* George Stranahan
* Michael Cohen (physicist)
* Robert Craig

Established| 1962
Focus| Physics
President| Matthias Troyer
Address| 700 Gillespie Ave, Aspen, CO 81611, USA
Location|

Aspen

Colorado

United States

Website| aspenphys.org

The Aspen Center for Physics (ACP) is a non-profit institution for physics research located in Aspen, Colorado, in the Rocky Mountains region of the United States. Since its foundation in 1962, it has hosted distinguished physicists for short-term visits during seasonal winter and summer programs, to promote collaborative research in fields including astrophysics, cosmology, condensed matter physics, string theory, quantum physics, biophysics, and more.[1][2]

To date, sixty-six of the center's affiliates have won Nobel Prizes in Physics and three have won Fields Medals in mathematics. Its affiliates have garnered a wide array of other national and international distinctions, among them the Abel Prize, the Dirac Medal, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the MacArthur Prize, and the Breakthrough Prize.[3][4][5][6][7] Its visitors have included figures such as the cosmologist and gravitational theorist Stephen Hawking, the particle physicist Murray Gell-Mann, the condensed matter theorist Philip W. Anderson, and the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher.[8][9][10][11]

In addition to serving as a locus for physics research, the ACP's mission has entailed public outreach: offering programs to educate the general public about physics and to stimulate interest in the subject among youth.[12][13]

## History & public outreach

[edit]

The Aspen Center for Physics was founded in 1962 by three people: George Stranahan, Michael Cohen, and Robert W. Craig. George Stranahan, then a postdoctoral fellow at Purdue University, played a critical role in raising funds and early public support for the initiative. He later left physics to become a craft brewer, rancher, and entrepreneur, although he remained a lifelong supporter of the center. Stranahan's enterprises included the Flying Dog Brewery.[14] Michael Cohen was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a condensed matter physicist whose work investigated the properties of real-world material systems such as ferroelectrics, liquid helium, and biological membranes. Robert W. Craig was the first director of the Aspen Institute, an international non-profit center which supports the exchange of ideas on matters relating to public policy.[15][6][16][17][18]

From its establishment, the ACP has developed a close relationship with the city of Aspen and has contributed to the cultural life of the local community. It has collaborated with other institutions such as the Aspen Institute, the Aspen Music Festival, the Wheeler Opera House, the Aspen Science Center, and the Pitkin County Library.[16][19][12]

The center has benefitted from the generosity of public support, notably from the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Energy, NASA, and from the gifts of private donors. These funds have helped to bring hundreds of scientists to the center every year, and have enabled the ACP to host a wide array of public lectures and activities.[20][6]

In addition to sponsoring these public events at its campus in Aspen, the ACP has also broadcast programs on a local-access television station – the “Physics Preview” show on Grassrootstv.org – and on radio, via its ″Radio Physics″ program for high school students on the KDNK station.[12]

## Supporters & donors

[edit]

The Aspen Center for Physics has benefitted over the years from many acts of philanthropy.  Gifts from Aspen donors as well as from George Stranahan, Martin Flug, the Smart Family Foundation, and affiliated physicists have been especially important to sustaining the center's development and operation.

George Stranahan was an early driving force behind the establishment and funding of the ACP. After convincing the Aspen Institute to open in 1961 an independent physics division, where scientists could convene to conduct research, he began raising funds to open the Aspen Center for Physics, by collecting donations from locals and Aspen Institute participants. Stranahan raised funds for the original ACP building at a cost of $85,000, while contributing $38,000 himself. To recognize the central role that Stranahan played in establishing the center, the first building constructed on the ACP campus is named in his honor as Stranahan Hall.[21][22] It was designed by Herbert Bayer, who pioneered Aspen's post-World War Two architectural revitalization.[23][24]

Martin Flug, an Aspen businessman who had been interested in physics since his undergraduate time at Harvard University, funded the construction of an auditorium and a lecture series to accompany it: the Flug Forum. The auditorium is named to honor Flug's father Samuel Flug, an investment banker who was born in Warsaw, Poland and who died in 1962.[25]

Smart Hall

The Smart Family Foundation of Connecticut funded the construction of Smart Hall, a building on the ACP campus erected in 1996. The gift was arranged by A. Douglas Stone, a member of the Smart family, a physicist at Yale University, and a past ACP Scientific Secretary, Trustee, General Member, and Honorary Member.[25][26][27][28][29][30]

The third building on the ACP campus, Bethe Hall, is named after Hans Bethe, the German-American nuclear physicist, based at Cornell University. Bethe donated part of his prize money to the ACP after winning the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1967 for his work on stellar nucleosynthesis.[22][25][31] Bethe was a long-standing participant at the center: he was vice president and Trustee in the 1970s, then an Honorary Trustee from the 1970s until his death in 2005.[27][26]

Following Bethe's example, several other physicists whose achievements merited awards went on to donate part of their prize money to the ACP.  Recognizing these scientist-donors, the ACP established the “Bethe Circle.”[31]

Bethe Circle  Name of Physicist  | Award  | Year

|
|

Gordon Baym | APS Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research | 2021
Daniel Freedman  | Special Breakthrough Prize | 2019
Vassiliki Kalogera | Hans A. Bethe Prize | 2016
Greg Moore | Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics | 2014
Hirosi Ooguri | Hamburg Prize for Theoretical Physics | 2018
Pierre Ramond | Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics | 2015
John Schwarz  | Physics Frontiers Prize  | 2013
Matthias Troyer  | Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics | 2016

## Luminaries

[edit]

ACP participants have included hundreds of post–doctoral fellows, professors, researchers and experimentalists who have come for short-term visits. Some had already achieved distinction before coming to the center; others won prizes or gained international recognition after spending time at the ACP early in their careers. Dozens of ACP physicists have received prestigious awards for their work, including the Nobel Prize in Physics.

The following scientists have participated at the Aspen Center for Physics at least once. Several have attended for a number of years.[3]

Nobel Prize Winners  Nobel Laureate  | Year of Prize

|

Philip Warren Anderson | 1977
Arthur Ashkin | 2018
John Bardeen | 1956, 1972
Barry C. Barish | 2017
Hans Bethe | 1967
Owen Chamberlain | 1959
Steven Chu | 1997
Leon N. Cooper | 1972
Francis Harry C. Crick | 1962
James Watson Cronin | 1980
Richard Feynman | 1965
Val Logsdon Fitch | 1980
William Alfred Fowler | 1983
Murray Gell-Mann | 1969
Andrea Ghez | 2020
Riccardo Giacconi | 2002
Donald A. Glaser | 1960
Sheldon L. Glashow | 1979
David Gross | 2004
Duncan M. Haldane | 2016
John L. Hall | 2005
Robert Hofstadter | 1961
Russell Hulse | 1993
Brian D. Josephson | 1973
Takaaki Kajita | 2015
Wolfgang Ketterle | 2001
Walter Kohn | 1998
Masatoshi Koshiba | 2002
John M. Kosterlitz | 2016
Robert B. Laughlin | 1998
Leon Max Lederman | 1988
David Morris Lee | 1996
Tsung-Dao Lee | 1957
Anthony James Leggett | 2003
John C. Mather | 2006
Michel Mayor | 2019
W.E. Moerner | 2014
Yoichiro Nambu | 2008
Konstantin S. Novoselov | 2010
Douglas D. Osheroff | 1996
P. James E. Peebles | 2019
Roger Penrose | 2020
Martin L. Perl | 1995
Saul Perlmutter | 2011
Edward M. Purcell | 1952
Didier Queloz | 2019
Norman Foster Ramsey | 1989
Frederick Reines | 1995
Robert C. Richardson | 1996
Adam Riess | 2011
Carlo Rubbia | 1984
Brian Schmidt | 2011
J. Robert Schrieffer | 1972
George Smoot | 2006
Gerardus 't Hooft | 1999
Joseph H. Taylor | 1993
Kip S. Thorne | 2017
David J. Thouless | 2016
Samuel C. C. Ting | 1976
Charles Hard Townes | 1964
Daniel Tsui | 1998
Martinus J.G. Veltman | 1999
Rainer Weiss | 2017
Carl E. Wieman | 2001
Frank Wilczek | 2004
Kenneth Geddes Wilson | 1982
Fields Medalists Fields Medalists  | Year of Prize

|

Michael Freedman | 1986
Stephen Smale | 1966
Edward Witten | 1990
Abel Prize Winners  Abel Laureates  | Year of Prize

|

Karen Uhlenbeck | 2019
Isador M. Singer | 2004
Recent Prizewinners  Prizewinners  | Name of Prize  | Year of Prize  | Institution

|
|
|

Elihu Abrahams | Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize | 2019  | University of California, Los Angeles
Gordon Baym | APS Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research  | 2021  | University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
Paul M. Chaikin | Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize  | 2018  | New York University
Sally Dawson | J.J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics | 2017  | Brookhaven National Laboratory
Alexei Efros | Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize  | 2019  | University of Utah
Daniel Freedman  | Special Breakthrough Prize | 2019  | Stanford University
Michael Green | Physics Frontiers Prize  | 2014  | Cambridge University
John F. Gunion | J.J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics  | 2017  | University of California Davis
Howard Haber | J.J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics  | 2017  | University of California Santa Cruz
C. R. Hagen | J.J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics | 2010  | University of Rochester
David Hitlin | W.K.H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics | 2016  | California Institute of Technology
Randy Hulet | Davisson–Germer Prize | 2016  | Rice University
Clifford Johnson | Klopsteg Memorial Lecture Award | 2018  | University of Southern California
Clifford Johnson  | Simons Fellow in Theoretical Physics  | 2016  | University of Southern California
Vassiliki Kalogera | Hans E. Bethe Prize | 2016  | Northwestern University
Marc Kamionkowski | Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics | 2015  | Johns Hopkins University
Gordon Kane | J.J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics  | 2017  | University of Michigan
Alexei Kitaev | Dirac Medal of the ICTP | 2015  | California Institute of Technology
Alexei Kitaev  | Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize  | 2017  | California Institute of Technology
Andy Millis  | Hamburg Prize for Theoretical Physics  | 2017  | Columbia University
Greg Moore | Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics  | 2014  | Rutgers University
Greg Moore  | Dirac Medal of the ICTP  | 2015  | Rutgers University
Ann Nelson | J.J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics  | 2018  | University of Washington
Hirosi Ooguri | Hamburg Prize for Theoretical Physics  | 2018  | California Institute of Technology and Kavli IPMU
Hirosi Ooguri  | Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon | 2019  | California Institute of Technology and Kavli IPMU
David Pines | Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize | 2016  | University of California Davis
Pierre Ramond | Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics  | 2015  | University of Florida
Pierre Ramond  | Dirac Medal of the ICTP  | 2020  | University of Florida
Nicholas Read | Dirac Medal of the ICTP  | 2015  | Yale University
Subir Sachdev | Dirac Medal of the ICTP  | 2018  | Harvard University
John Schwarz  | Physics Frontiers Prize  | 2013  | California Institute of Technology
Boris Shklovskii | Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize  | 2019  | University of Minnesota
David Spergel | Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics  | 2015  | Princeton University
Ian Spielman  | Rabi Prize in Atomic, Molecular & Optical Physics  | 2015  | National Institute of Standards and Technology
Dam Thanh Son | Dirac Medal of the ICTP  | 2018  | University of Chicago
Matthias Troyer  | Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics  | 2016  | Microsoft
Matthias Troyer  | Hamburg Prize for Theoretical Physics  | 2019  | Microsoft
Karen Uhlenbeck | Abel Prize  | 2019  | University of Texas at Austin
Migual Virasoro  | Dirac Medal of the ICTP  | 2020  | Universidad Nacional de General Sarmient
Xiao-Gang Wen | Dirac Medal of the ICTP  | 2018  | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Xiao-Gang Wen  | Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize  | 2017  | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

## References

[edit]

1. ^ "About Us". Aspen Center for Physics. Retrieved 1 January 2013.
2. ^ "Get Smart" (PDF). The Aspen Times. Retrieved 4 September 2013.
3. ^ a b "Aspen Center for Physics". www.aspenphys.org. Retrieved 2023-06-16.
4. ^ "Aspen Center for Physics". www.aspenphys.org. Retrieved 2023-06-16.
5. ^ "Hirosi Ooguri". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation... Retrieved 2023-06-16.
6. ^ a b c Turner, Michael S. (June 2012). "Aspen physics turns 50". Nature. 486 (7403): 315–317\. doi:10.1038/486315a. ISSN 1476-4687. PMID 22722174.
7. ^ "Science for Science's Sake". Aspen Daily News. Retrieved 4 September 2013.
8. ^ "PastPerfect". archiveaspen.catalogaccess.com. Retrieved 2023-08-22.
9. ^ "PastPerfect". archiveaspen.catalogaccess.com. Retrieved 2023-08-22.
10. ^ "Aspen Center for Physics". www.aspenphys.org. Retrieved 2023-06-16.
11. ^ "Aspen Center for Physics". www.aspenphys.org. Retrieved 2023-07-21.
12. ^ a b c "Informing the Public". Aspen Center for Physics. Retrieved 4 September 2013.
13. ^ "PastPerfect". archiveaspen.catalogaccess.com. Retrieved 2023-08-22.
14. ^ Traub, Alex (2021-06-20). "George Stranahan, Benefactor of Physicists and Bar Flies, Dies at 89". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-07-21.
15. ^ Agar, Charles (May 27, 2007). "Physics (and a little fishin')". Aspen Times. Archived from the original on 4 October 2013. Retrieved 1 January 2013.
16. ^ a b "Aspen Center for Physics". www.aspenphys.org. Retrieved 2023-06-16.
17. ^ Video Interview: The Formative Years (ACP)_1999_105 Min, retrieved 2023-08-22
18. ^ Video Interview: The Founders (ACP)_1999_90 min, retrieved 2023-08-22
19. ^ "Aspen Center for Physics". www.aspenphys.org. Retrieved 2023-06-16.
20. ^ "Financial Support of the Aspen Center for Physics". www.aspenphys.org. Retrieved 2023-06-16.
21. ^ "Aspen Center for Physics". www.aspenphys.org. Retrieved 2023-06-16.
22. ^ a b Overbye, Dennis (2001-08-28). "In Aspen, Physics on a High Plane". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-06-16.
23. ^ Ruby, Ali. "About - Resnick Center for Herbert Bayer Studies". The Resnick Center for Herbert Bayer Studies. Retrieved 2023-07-23.
24. ^ "Aspen Center for Physics". www.aspenphys.org. Retrieved 2023-07-23.
25. ^ a b c "Aspen Center for Physics". www.aspenphys.org. Retrieved 2023-06-16.
26. ^ a b "Aspen Center for Physics". www.aspenphys.org. Retrieved 2023-07-23.
27. ^ a b "Aspen Center for Physics". www.aspenphys.org. Retrieved 2023-07-23.
28. ^ "Aspen Center for Physics". www.aspenphys.org. Retrieved 2023-07-23.
29. ^ "Aspen Center for Physics". www.aspenphys.org. Retrieved 2023-07-23.
30. ^ "A. Douglas Stone | Department of Applied Physics". appliedphysics.yale.edu. Retrieved 2023-07-23.
31. ^ a b "Aspen Center for Physics". aspenphys.org. Retrieved 2023-06-16.

39°11′53″N 106°49′44″W﻿ / ﻿39.19806°N 106.82889°W﻿ / 39.19806; -106.82889

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