DETAILS: 2016 Herzberg Memorial Public Lecture, University of Ottawa, Monday June 13, 2016, 7:30 P.M., The Shaw Centre, Ottawa, Ontario
Victoria Kaspi, McGill University
The Cosmic Gift of Neutron Stars
ABSTRACT: Although they are thousands of light years away, neutron stars can act as very precise cosmic beacons -- a celestial gift that sheds light on some of the most interesting problems in modern science. We will explore these strange objects, explain how astronomers are using them to study issues ranging from the origins of the Universe to the very nature of matter, and even listen to the cosmic symphony they create.
BIOGRAPHY: Victoria Kaspi is a Professor of Physics at McGill University, where she holds the Lorne Trottier Chair in Astrophysics and Cosmology, and a Canada Research Chair in Observational Astrophysics. She is also Director of the newly created McGill Space Institute. She received a B.Sc. (Honours) in Physics from McGill University in 1989, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Physics from Princeton University in 1991 and 1993 respectively. From 1994-96, she held a Hubble Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and California Institute of Technology. She was an Assistant Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1997-2000, and joined the McGill Department of Physics in 2000. Prof. Kaspi uses techniques of radio and X-ray astronomy to study rapidly rotating, highly magnetized neutron stars. She has done significant work involving radio pulsars and magnetars. More specifically, she has contributed among other things to the study of binary pulsar dynamics, the neutron star population, as well as the study of magnetars, the most highly magnetized objects known in the Universe. Prof. Kaspi has been the recipient of numerous awards and honours, including the Killam Prize in 2015, NSERC's John C. Polanyi Award in 2011, the Prix du Québec in 2009, the Harvard University Sackler Lectureship in 2009. She is the R. Howard Webster Foundation Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2010 she was inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, and elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015.
HISTORY OF THE HERZBERG MEMORIAL PUBLIC LECTURE: In 2000, the CAP Council made a decision in to change the Sunday lecture given at its Annual Congress from a keynote lecture to a public lecture. The lecture would be named the “Herzberg Memorial Public Lecture” in honour of Nobel Laureate Dr. Gerhard Herzberg, longstanding member of the CAP, in recognition of Dr. Herzberg’s known desire to increase the awareness and appreciation of science amongst the public, particularly youth. Support for the Herzberg lecturer is provided, in part, through a bequest from Dr. Herzberg.
