Public Lectures
At ICTS, science outreach for school and college students and civic society in general is taken very seriously. ICTS regularly organizes public lectures given by eminent visitors. Public lectures bring exciting new developments in science to the general public and play an important role in engaging students and civic society at large on issues of modern science.
Past Lectures
Big Bang, Black Holes & Gravitational Waves
Abhay Ashtekar (Institute for Gravitation & the Cosmos and Physics Department, The Pennsylvania State University)
21 August 2019, 16:00 to 17:00
Chandrasekhar Auditorium, ICTS-TIFR, Hesaraghatta, Bengaluru
Big Bang, Black Holes and Gravitational Waves now appear as compelling – even Obvious –consequences of general relativity. Therefore, it may seem surprising that none of these ideas were readily accepted. Not only was there considerable debate, but in fact leading figures were often arguing on what...more
(Un)seen at last: the black hole in M87
Rajaram Nityananda (Azim Premji University, Bengaluru & former Director of NCRA-TIFR, Pune)
29 April 2019, 16:00 to 17:30
Chandrasekhar Auditorium, ICTS-TIFR, Hesaraghatta, Bengaluru
The image of a ring of emission at 1.3 mm wavelength at the centre of the galaxy M87 has caught everyone’s imagination. It is direct evidence of a long suspected black hole, and was made by combining signals from antennas spanning much of the globe, This lecture will describe three streams flowing...more
What is common between falling cats and the Quantum Hall Effect?
Alexander Abanov (Stony Brook University, New York)
10 August 2018, 16:00 to 18:00
Chandrasekhar Auditorium, ICTS, Bangalore
Have you ever seen how a cat lands on its feet? Even 6 week old kittens seem to be able to do it perfectly from any position. In this lecture we will discuss how cats do it by changing their shape in a particular way. Remarkably, the mathematical structures relevant for “cat landing physics” are...more
Chandra.The journey of a star
Giuseppe Mussardo (SISSA, Trieste, Italy)
03 August 2018, 16:00 to 18:00
Chandrasekhar Auditorium, ICTS, Bangalore
"Chandra. The journey of a star" is a movie about the renowned Astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, written by Giuseppe Mussardo. Prof. Mussardo will say a few words about the movie, followed by the screening of the movie at the Chandrasekhar Auditorium, ICTS-TIFR. Contact Us at : outreach @...more
Black Holes and the Structure of Spacetime
Juan Maldacena (IAS Princeton, NJ)
25 May 2018, 16:00 to 18:00
Chandrasekhar Auditorium, ICTS, Bangalore
Black holes are fascinating objects predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity. Though they were initially viewed as pathological and unphysical solutions, they were later understood to be a solid and generic outcome of the theory. They are objects where the distortion of space and time...more
Can evolution be understood quantitatively?
Daniel Fisher (Stanford University)
06 March 2018, 16:00 to 18:00
Chandrasekhar Auditorium, ICTS, Bangalore
The basic laws of evolution have been known for more than a century and there is overwhelming evidence for the facts of evolution. Yet little is understood quantitatively about the dynamical processes that drive evolution: by physicists' standards, the theory of evolution is far from fully-fledged...more
The science of the man from the 9 dimensions
Hirosi Ooguri (Fred Kavli Professor of Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, Director of the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics, Caltech; Principal Investigator, Kavli IPMU, The University of Tokyo and President, Aspen Center for Physics)
14 January 2018, 18:30 to 19:30
J. N. Planetarium, Bangalore
"The Man from the 9 Dimensions" is a 3D dome theater movie on Superstring Theory, the leading candidate for the unified theory of forces and matters including gravity. Professor Ooguri served as an advisor to the movie to ensure its scientific accuracy. The movie has received numerous prizes and...more
The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge
Robbert Dijkgraaf (IAS, Princeton)
07 January 2018, 16:00 to 18:00
Main Auditorium, Christ University, Bangalore
In his classic essay The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge , Abraham Flexner, the founding director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the man who helped bring Albert Einstein to the United States, describes a great paradox of scientific research. The search for answers to deep...more
Deciphering the workings of molecules, building blocks of life, with the electron microscope
Joachim Frank (Columbia University, New York, USA)
01 November 2017, 16:00 to 17:30
Chandrasekhar Auditorium, ICTS, Bangalore
We stand at the culmination of a technological development that lasted for decades, and went largely unnoticed until recently. It involved many innovations of instrumentation, of sample preparation, and computer processing methods for which this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded. As...more
What are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?
John Ellis ( King's College, London, UK)
08 June 2017, 16:30 to 18:00
Chandrasekhar Auditorium, ICTS, Bangalore
Particle physicists are trying to answer these questions, posed by the artist Paul Gauguin in a famous painting. The discovery of the Higgs boson apparently completes our understanding of the structure of matter, and may hold clues to where we come from and where we are going. But there are other...more

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