James and Jean Davis Prestige Visitor Sir Michael Berry
Internationally recognised theoretical physicist Sir Michael Berry will visit the University of Otago this month and present a public lecture revealing the world of light.
Based at the University of Bristol since 1965, and as an Emeritus Professor since 2008, Sir Michael (FRS) is renowned for his groundbreaking work in classical optics and quantum physics.
“Soon after starting research in the 1960s, the physics of light appealed to me,” Sir Michael says.
“Phenomena such as rainbows, twinkling starlight, and the sparkling of the sun on the sea, are optical analogues of the wave effects I was studying in quantum physics, with the advantage that I could see them, often with my bare eyes.
“Later, I came to regard these connections between everyday phenomena and abstract concepts - the arcane in the mundane - as significant more generally, a kind of cultural unification.”
Sir Michael is visiting the University of Otago, Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka on a James and Jean Davis Prestige Visitorship, and during his week-long stay will be hosted by the Department of Physics and Department of Mathematics and Statistics.
Sir Michael has received numerous awards, including the Maxwell Medal and the Paul Dirac Medal of the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society’s Royal Medal, the London Mathematical Society’s Polya Prize, the Wolf Prize and the Lorentz Medal. He has received 12 honorary doctorates, including from Trinity College Dublin, the Weizmann Institute and Technion.
Vice-Chancellor Grant Robertson says it’s an honour to welcome Sir Michael to Otago as a Prestige Visitor and scholar of outstanding distinction and international eminence.
“Sir Michael’s dedicated career as a physicist to the study of light is highly respected internationally. We are fortunate to have him visit and to learn more about the depth and accessibility of his scholarship that links science and the arts,” Grant says.
In his public lecture ‘The physics of light in eighty pictures’ on 16 August, Sir Michael will unveil the hidden geometries behind phenomena such as rainbows and sunlight reflections that create moving lines of light on the bottoms of swimming-pools.
Poets and novelists, as well as painters, often represent optical phenomena in ways surprisingly close to those of physicists, Sir Michael says.
Sir Michael first visited New Zealand with the London and New Zealand Mathematical Societies as Forder Lecturer, and he says he’s looking forward to returning.
“When I visited Dunedin in 1999, my initial impression was the city seems like Edinburgh on the Pacific.
“It's hard to imagine a better combination, so I'm looking forward to revisiting this extraordinary location.”
The public lecture will be held at 6pm on Friday, 16 August in Castle 2 Lecture Theatre (Dunedin campus). Further details here.