News
Nobel inauguration
Prof. Phillip James Edwin Peebles, a Canadian-American physicist, cosmologist, astrophysicist and astronomer, one of the pioneers of the theory of the formation of cosmic structures and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, gave an opening lecture at the World Copernican Congress.
The official opening of the proceedings took place on 19 February 2023, the anniversary of Nicolaus Copernicus' birth and, at the same time, Nicolaus Copernicus University Day. The events began with the Holy Mass at the SS Johns' Cathedral, where a commemorative plaque was unveiled in the Copernicus Chapel. After the ceremony, the academic procession laid flowers at the Monument of Nicolaus Copernicus in Toruń's Old Town Market Square.
At 11:00 am, the ceremony moved to the NCU Aula, where they spoke, among others: Przemyslaw Czarnek, Minister of Education and Science, and Prof. Andrzej Sokala, Rector of the NCU, Prof. Jacek Popiel, Rector of the Jagiellonian University, Prof. Jerzy Przyborowski, Rector of UWM, and Prof. Krzysztof Mikulski, Director of the Centre for Copernican Studies.
The momentous moment of the inauguration was the lecture delivered by Prof. Philip James Edwin Peebles, Canadian astronomer and cosmologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2019. A webcast of the speech is available on the UMK TV website, the photo gallery is available on https://kopernik550.umk.pl/en/galleries.
Professor Phillip James Edwin Peebles is a prominent Canadian-American physicist, cosmologist, astrophysicist and astronomer, one of the pioneers of the theory of cosmic structure formation. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Manitoba and a doctorate in 1962 from Princeton University. He remained at Princeton for the remainder of his career and is currently the Albert Einstein Professor in Science, Emeritus.
He has lectured at the world's leading universities, such as Yale, Cambridge, and Oxford Universities, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology. Prof Peebles' work mainly concerns physical cosmology and the origin of the universe. He predicted cosmic microwave background radiation with Prof. Robert Dick and other scientists. He has authored and co-authored nearly 250 scientific publications and written seven books, cited overall more than 30,000 times. Prof. Peebles is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Astronomical Society, the American Physical Society, the Royal Society of Canada, and the National Academy of Sciences in the USA, to name just a few. He has received many awards and honours for his scientific achievements, including the Eddington Medal and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Heineman Prize of the American Astronomical Society, The Cosmology Prize of the Gruber Foundation, the Harvey Prize granted by the Israel Technion Institute, the Crafoord Prize and the Dirac Medal. He is a Doctor Honoris Causa of the National University of Cordoba and the University of British Columbia, among others. Prof . Peebles was awarded half of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2019 for his discoveries in physical cosmology. He shared the prize with Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz for their discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a sun-like star.
Mentor S.A. is the exclusive sponsor of the opening lecture of the World Copernican Congress.
Editors of the NCU News
Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń
Source: https://portal.umk.pl/en