[FDE] Colloquium: How I Learned to Stop Worrying about Schödinger’s Cat

[Ali, Saqib]

Lecturer: Dr. Hans Christian Von Baeyer
Topic: How I Learned to Stop Worrying about Schödinger's Cat
Location: OLSSON 120, The College of William and Mary, Virginia
When: Tuesday, March 13, 2007
More Info: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/colloquia/event603.html

Abstract:
The meaning of quantum mechanics, the description of light and atoms,
has been controversial since its invention in 1925. Throughout my
career I have lived with the nagging worry that the theory, in spite
of all its spectacular successes in practice, doesn't really make
sense. The Nobel laureate Richard Feynman famously grumbled: "Nobody
understands quantum mechanics!" But now, at the dawning of the
information age, the new technologies of quantum computing and quantum
cryptography are inspiring a new optimism that we will be able to
resolve the fundamental paradoxes of quantum mechanics by re-examining
the relationship between information and probability. I hope that
Feynman's remark will soon be history!

Dr. Baeyer's Biography:
In the course of his career he has been elected Fellow of the American
Physical Society, served as Director of the Virginia Associated
Research Campus--an interdisciplinary research laboratory which became
the nucleus of the Jefferson Lab (the world's premier electron
accelerator facility for nuclear physics)--and garnered numerous
awards for his scientific writing. His other books include "Taming the
Atom", "Rainbows, Snowflakes and Quarks", and "Warmth Disperses and
Time Passes". (from Harvard University Press)