June 2014 time-lapse photo taken by Shane Larson of sky over Smart Hall at the Aspen Center for Physics during an astrophysics workshop.

"The atmosphere at ACP is inspiring and my creativity level seems to go up as if I were in my twenties. The staff here is professional and very friendly. The facilities are perfect. The talks here are excellent...Being in Korea, I often find myself isolated from the frontline of research. Staying here at ACP helps me to be in contact with a world-class level of research and gives me an opportunity to meet people who are actively involved in the hot issues of my interest."


Recent Past Public Lectures



The Nick and Maggie DeWolf Foundation has sponsored our winter public lecture series since their inception in 1985. Summer lectures are presented by the Aspen Center for Physics in memory of Heinz R. Pagels.  You can click the links below to go directly to the talks organized by year. Lectures prior to 2017 can also be found through Grassroots website: http://www.grassrootstv.org/ Since 2017, the lectures have been archived on YouTube, Aspen Physics.

2023

  • Recreational Biology: Topological Puzzles at Cellular Scales
    Speaker: Manu Prakash, Stanford University
  • A Physicist's View of Wiggling Worms and Fighting Fish
    Speaker: Joshua Shaevitz, Princeton University
  • Topic: Will Machine Intelligence Surpass Human Intelligence?
    Speaker: Yann LeCun, Meta-AI, New York University
  • Never-Before-Seen Details of the Universe with the James Webb Telescope (JWST)
    Speaker: Susan Mullally, Space Telescope Science Institute

2022

  • The Quantum Physics of Matter and Light
    Speaker: Ana Asenjo-Garcia, Columbia University
    • Watch the lecture.

  • From the Possibility to the Certainty of a Supermassive Black Hole
    Speaker: Andrea Ghez, UCLA, 2020 Nobel Prize Winner
    • Watch the lecture.
  • Quantum Simulation of Relativistic Physics with Atomic Bose-Einstein Condensates
    Speaker: Ian Spielman, National Institute of Standards and Technology
    • Watch the lecture.
  • Quantum Phenomena at the Human Scale
    Speaker: Steven Kivelson, Stanford University
    • Watch the lecture.
  • Geometry and String Theory Confronting Black Holes and Particle Physics
    Speaker: Mirjam Cvetic, University of Pennsylvania
    • Watch the lecture.

  • Engineering Gravitational Theories
    Speaker: Alejandra Castro, University of Amsterdam
    • Watch the lecture.

  • JWST Comes to Life!
    Speaker: Garth Illingworth, University of California Santa Cruz
    Watch the lecture.

  • The Genealogy of the Milky Way and its Missing Dark Matter
    Speaker: Lina Necib, MIT
    Watch the lecture.
  • How Satellites Reveal the Physics of Penguins
    Speaker: Heather Lynch, Stonybrook University
    • Watch the lecture.
  • Gravitational Wave Observatories: Today and Tomorrow
    Speaker: David Shoemaker, MIT Kavli Institute   
    Watch the lecture. 

  • Adaptive Matter: Living Systems, Machine Learning, and Robots
    Speaker: Vincenzo Vitelli, University of Chicago 
  • What Physicists Do Behind Closed Doors
    Speaker: Paul Goldbart, Stony Brook University
    • Watch the lecture.
  • Touring a Supermassive Black Hole
    Speaker: Daryl Haggard, McGill University
    • Watch the lecture.

  • The Strange New Universe of Quantum Materials
    Speaker: Piers Coleman, Rutgers University
    • Watch the lecture.

  • Entanglement and the Second Quantum Revolution
    Speaker: Duncan Haldane, Princeton University 
    Watch the lecture.

  • Unearthing New Theories Effectively
    Speaker: Sophie Renner, University of Glasgow
    Watch the lecture.

  • Chaos, Black Holes, and Quantum Mechanics
    Speaker: Stephen Shenker, Stanford University
    Watch the lecture.
  • Black Holes and Quantum Teleportation
    Speaker: Douglas Stanford, Stanford University
    Watch the lecture.

2021

  • Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe
    Speaker: Gopolang Mohlabeng, Queens University
    Watch the lecture.
  • SARS-CoV2 and mRNA Vaccines by the (Bio)Numbers
    Speaker: Nic Vega, Emory University
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Mysterious Moun: the Electron's Heavy Sibling
    Speaker: Aida El-Khadra, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
    Watch the lecture.
  • Patterns in Posture: Chaotic Worms and Other Surprises from the Physics of Animal Behavior
    Speaker: Greg Stephens, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
    Watch the lecture.
  • Taking the First Picture of a Black Hole
    Speaker: Dimitrios Psaltis, University of Arizona
    Watch the lecture.
  • Understanding Solids with Supercomputers, Many Electrons at a Time
    Speaker: Cyrus Dreyer, Stonybrook University
    Watch the lecture.
  • Faster than Light: Spooky Action at a Distance in Nature
    Speaker: Mark Alford, Washington University in St. Louis
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Flavors of Particle Physics
    Speaker: Peter Onyisi, University of Texas Austin
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Cosmic Cocktail: Three Parts Dark Matter
    Speaker: Katherine Freese, University of Texas Austin
    Watch the lecture.
  • Puzzles in the Milky Way's Highest-Energy Light
    Speaker: Tracy Slatyer, MIT
    Watch the lecture.
  • Atoms and Photons: from Fundamental Physics to Quantum Technology
    Speaker: Monika Schleier-Smith, Stanford University
    Watch the lecture.

2020

  • Particle Physics: What We Know We Don't Know
    Speaker: André de Gouvêa, Northwestern University
    Watch the lecture.
  • Macrocosm in the Microcosm:  Analogies Between Materials and Particle Physics
    Speaker: Peter Armitage, Johns Hopkins University
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Black Hole Information Paradox: A Resolution on the Horizon?
    Speaker: Netta Engelhardt, MIT
    Watch the lecture.
  • Darkly Changed Dark Matter
    • Speaker: Lisa Randall, Harvard University
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Evolutionary "Design" of Protein Machines
    Speaker: Rama Ranganathan, University of Chicago
    • Watch the lecture.
  • Giant Black Holes Devouring Stars: Extreme Cosmic Events Illuminating Black Hole Spacetimes
    Speaker: Jane Dai, University of Hong Kong
    • Watch the lecture.
  • Time Reversal Symmetry and Unconventional Superconductors
    Speaker: Aharon Kapitulnik, Stanford University
    • Watch the lecture.
  • In Hot Water: Our Changing Polar Oceans
    Speaker: Andrew Thompson, Caltech
  • The Hubble Conundrum: A Potential Hint of New Physics in the Universe's Oldest Light
    Speaker: Colin Hill, Columbia University
    Watch the lecture.
  • Quantum Mechanics for Quantum Materials: The Quantum Revolution in Solid State Physics and Materials Science
    Speaker: Andrew Millis, Columbia University
    Watch the lecture.
  • Gulliver’s Travels in Biology: On the Size of Living Things 
    Speaker: Jane Kondev, Brandeis University
    Watch the lecture.

  • Tying Knots in Quantum Computing
    Speaker: Charles Marcus, University of Copenhagen
    Watch the lecture.

  • Materials in the Flatland
    Speaker: Konstantin Novoselov, University of Manchester
    Watch the lecture.

  • Hubble Past and Present:Witnessing the Formation of Galaxies 
    Speaker: Casey Papovich, Texas A&M University
    Watch the lecture.

  • Quantum Computing and the Entanglement Frontier
    Speaker: John Preskill, Caltech
    Watch the lecture.

  • Card Tricks and Quantum Physics
    Speaker: Thierry Giamarchi, University of Geneva
    Watch the lecture.

2019

  • The 2018 Nobel Lecture in Physics: Optical Tweezers and their Biological Applications
    Speaker: Arthur Ashkin, Bell Laboratories, emeritus
    Watch the lecture.
  • Rise of the Machines: Deep Learning from Backgammon to Skynet
    Speaker: Paul Ginsparg, Cornell University
    Watch the lecture.
  • Quantum Dances: Life, Love and Jealousy in the Quantum World
    Speaker: Ulrich Schollwoeck, University of Munich
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Ultimate Collision: Neutron Stars Rattle Shine and Sparkle
    Speaker: Sanjay Reddy, University of Washington
    Watch the lecture.
  • The First Galaxies: Exploring Cosmic Sunrise with Hubble and JWST
    Speaker: Garth Illingworth, UC Santa Cruz and Lick Observatory
    Watch the lecture.
  • Entangled Butterflies: Chaos in the Quantum World
    Speaker: Brian Swingle, University of Maryland
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Unity of Physics: From New Materials to Fundamental Laws of Nature
    Speaker: David Tong, University of Cambridge
    Watch the lecture.
  • From Cosmological Observations to Fundamental Physics: Past, Present, and Future
    Speaker: Cora Dvorkin, Harvard University
    Watch the lecture.
  • Exploring the Dark Side of Our Cosmos: “Seeing" the Invisible.
    Speaker: Mustafa Amin, Rice University
    Watch the lecture.
  • A Dark Matter Hunter's Guide to the Galaxy
    Speaker: Kathryn Zurek, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
    Watch the lecture.
  • Physics and the HIV Virus
    Speaker: Robijn Bruinsma, University of California Los Angeles
    Watch the lecture.
  • How Much Number Theory Does it Take to be a Sunflower
    Speaker: Leonid Levitov, MIT
    Watch the lecture.
  • Making Crystals Clear - from Food to Phone
    Speaker: Emilia Morosan, Rice University
    Watch the lecture.
  • Information processing in a single cell: what and how does E. coli compute?
    Speaker: Yuhai Tu, IBM Research
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Brain Inside a Cell: Adaptation and Learning with Cellular Networks
    Speaker: Naama Brenner, Technion
    Watch the lecture.
  • Richard Feynman's Adventures in Biology: Forgotten History with Implications for Today
    Speaker: Curtis Callan, Princeton University
    Watch the lecture.
  • Graphic Talk About the Universe
    Speaker: Clifford Johnson, University of Southern California
    Watch the lecture.
  • Dark Matter Genesis: Tales from an Agnostic
    Speaker: Josh Ruderman, New York University
    Watch the lecture.
  • Particle Physics at the Crossroads
    Speaker: Csaba Csaki, Cornell University
    Watch the lecture.
  • Tuning Stars into Gold: The Discovery of the First Kilonova
    Speaker: Iair Arcavi , Tel Aviv University
    Watch the lecture.

2018

  • Games that Microbes Play: Cooperation and Cheating in the Microscopic Realm
    Speaker: Jeff Gore, MIT
    Watch the lecture.
  • Seeing What's Coming: How Your Brain Computes the Future
    Speaker: Stephanie Palmer, University of Chicago
    Watch the lecture.
  • Mapping the Dark Universe with Galaxy Surveys
    Speaker: Risa Wechsler, Stanford University
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Coolest Use of Light: Using Light Forces to Study the Coldest Matter in the Universe
    Speaker: Wolfgang Ketterle, MIT
    Watch the lecture.
  • AI in the Sky: Intelligent Machines in Science and Society
    Speaker: Brian Nord, Fermilab
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Inner Universe of Quantum Materials
    Speaker: Premala Chandra, Rutgers University
    Watch the lecture.
  • Faster, Smaller, Cheaper: Discovering the Universe on a Shoestring Budget
    Speaker: Jonathan Feng, University of California Irvine
    Watch the lecture.
  • Black Holes, Hawking Radiation and the Structure of Spacetime
    Speaker: Juan Maldacena, Institute for Advanced Studies
    Watch the lecture.
  • Illuminating Dark Matter: New Ideas in the Search for the Missing Universe
    Speaker: Neal Weiner, New York University
    Watch the lecture.
  • Dark Matter Archaeology
    Speaker: Mariangela Lisanti, Stanford University
    Watch the lecture.
  • Prediction and Control of Extreme Events, from Rogue Waves to Protein Folding
    Speaker: Eric Vanden-Eijnden, NYU
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Dark Energy of Quantum Materials
    Speaker: Laura H Greene, National High Field Magnet Lab
    Watch the lecture.
  • Tidal Disruption Events: How One Star’s Death Gives Life to a Black Hole
    Speaker: Erin Kara, University of Maryland
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Physics of Flocking
    Speaker: M Cristina Marchetti, Syracuse University
    Watch the lecture.
  • Searching for Cosmic Dawn
    Speaker: Cynthia Chiang, Princeton University
    Watch the lecture.
  • Knots in Physics
    Speaker: Louis Kauffman, University of Illinois at Chicago
    Watch the lecture.
  • Quantum Information Science: Exploring the Strangeness of the Atomic World for Information Processing
    Speaker: David Poulin, University of Sherbrooke
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Search for Quantum Gravity
    Speaker: Shiraz Minwalla, Tata Institute for Fundamental Research, Mumbai
    Watch the lecture.
  • We Have No Idea: An Exploration of the Unanswered Questions About Our Universe
    Speaker: Daniel Whiteson, University of California Irvine
    Watch the lecture.

2017

  • The Science of "The Man from the 9 Dimensions"
    Speaker: Hirosi Ooguri, Caltech
    Watch the lecture.
  • Origami: Art and Science
    Speaker: L Mehadevan, Harvard University
    Watch the lecture.
  • The All-American Total Solar Eclipse of August 2017
    Speaker: Alex Filippenko, UC Berkeley
    Watch the lecture.
  • Let's Go Delve Into a Black Hole
    Speaker: Feryal Ozel, University of Arizona
    Watch the lecture.
  • A Quantum Future of Computation
    Speaker: Matthias Troyer, Microsoft Research
    Watch the lecture.
  • Healing the Sciences/Humanities Divide
    Speaker: Lincoln Carr, Colorado School of Mines
    Watch the lecture.
  • This Time Will be Different: Time Crystals in Quantum Systems
    Speaker: Chetan Nayak, Microsoft Research
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Secret Life of the Higgs Boson
    Speaker: Stefania Gori, University of Cincinnati
    Watch the lecture.
  • Hidden Messages in Johannes Kepler's Frontispiece
    Speaker: Stefano Gattei, Caltech
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Quantum Physics of Climate Change
    Speaker: Brad Marston, Brown University
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Mathematics of Paper
    Speaker: Randall Kamien, University of Pennsylvania
    Watch the lecture.
  • Atomic Legos: Building and Investigating Quantum Matter One Atom at a Time
    Speaker: Markus Grenier, Harvard University
    Watch the lecture.
  • Humanity's New Gravitational Sense
    Speaker: Rana Adhikari, California Institute of Technology
    Watch the lecture.
  • Fast Radio Bursts and Nature's Latest Cosmic Mystery
    Speaker: Duncan Lorimer, West Virginia University
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Unification of Forces through Geometry
    Speaker: Alessandro Tomasiello, U of Milano-Bicocca
    Watch the lecture.
  • Confronting the Invisible Universe
    Speaker: Jesse Thaler, MIT
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Search for Exoplanets
    Speaker: Joshua N. Winn, Princeton University
    Watch the lecture.

2016

  • The Higgs Boson and the Mystery of Mass
    Speaker: Roni Harnik, Fermilab
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Dark Side of the Universe
    Speaker: Catherine Heymans, University of Edinburgh
    Watch the lecture.
  • Singing Binaries: Listening to the Chirps of Black Holes
    Speaker: Ilya Mandel, University of Birmingham
    Watch the lecture.
  • String Theory Meets Quantum Field Theory
    Speaker: Jacques Distler, University of Texas Austin
    Watch the lecture.
  • Does Copper have Extra Dimensions?
    Speaker: Philip Phillips, University of Illinois
    Watch the lecture.
  • Human Genome, Now in 3D!
    Speaker: Leonid Mirny, MIT
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Evolution Within Us: Statistics of Immunity
    Speaker: Aleksandra Walczak, Ecole Normale Superieure
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Search for Earth 2.0
    Speaker: Justin Crepp, Notre Dame
    Watch the preview.
    Watch the lecture.
  • Tiny Cells, Global Impact: The Ocean's Invisible Forest
    Speaker: Sallie (Penny) Chisholm, MIT
    Watch the lecture
  • Are We Ready for a Final Theory of Physics?
    Speaker: Michael Peskin, Stanford
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Monster of the Milky Way
    Speaker: Andrea Ghez, UCLA
    Watch the lecture.
  • Hunting for Exotic Quantum Particles under the Microscope
    Speaker: Ali Yazdani, Princeton University
    Watch the lecture.
  • Let There be Light: The First Stars
    Speaker: Rachel Webster, University of Melbourne
    Watch the lecture
  • Computational Complexity and Fundamental Physics
    Speaker: Scott Aaronson, MIT
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Human Body as a Living Material
    Speaker: Lisa Manning, University of Syracuse
    Watch the lecture.

2015

  • Nature's Smallest Rotary Engine: Why We Eat and Why We Breathe
    Speaker: Kazuhiko Kinosita Huang, Waseda University
    Watch the lecture
  • How Plants and Animals Survive Crashing Ocean Waves
    Speaker: Mark Denny, Stanford University
    Watch the preview.
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Monster at the Heart of the Milky Way
    Speaker: Andrea Ghez, UCLA
    Watch the preview.
    Watch the lecture.
  • Fundamental Physics in the 21st Century
    Speaker: Nima Arkani-Hamed, Institute for Advanced Study
    Watch the lecture.
  • From the Physics of Adhesion to Organ Repair
    Speaker: Ludwik Leibler, ESPCI
    Watch the preview.
    Watch the lecture
  • Quantum Matter, Spacetime, and Emergence
    Speaker: Shamit Kachru, Stanford University
    Watch the preview.
    Watch the lecture.
  • Taking the Universe's Baby Picture
    Speaker: David N Spergel, Princeton University
    Watch the preview.
    A second interview with Andy Curtis, Aspen 82, is available also.
    Watch the lecture.
  • Quantum Crystals, Quantum Computing and Quantum Cognition
    Speaker: Matthew P.A. Fisher, University of California, Santa Barbara and KITP
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Physics of the Iran Nuclear Negotiations
    Speaker: Jeremy Bernstein, Stevens Institute of Technology
    Watch the lecture
  • Mapping the Milky Way, Our Cosmic Backyard
    Speaker: Beth Willman, Haverford College Watch the lecture
  • Astronomy and Market Forces: Rediscovering an Ancient Partnership
    Speaker: Martin Elvis, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
    Watch the lecture
  • Sensing, Learning, and Communicating: Are our Cells Better than We are?
    Speaker: Ilya Nemenman, Emory University
    Watch the lecture
  • Engineered Magnetism in an Atomic Bose-Einstein Condensate
    Speaker: Ian Spielman, National Institute of Standards and Technology
    Watch the lecture
  • Using Geometry to Simplify Particle Physics
    Speaker: Henriette Elvang, University of Michigan
    Watch the lecture
  • The Secret Lives of Electrons
    Speaker: Chetan Nayak, Microsoft Research,Station Q
    . Watch the lecture
  • Ice Fishing for Neutrinos: the IceCube Project
    Speaker: Francis Halzen, University of Wisconsin, IceCube
    Watch the lecture
  • Revealing the Nature of Dark Matter
    Speaker: Dan Hooper, University of Chicago, Fermilab
    Watch the lecture
  • Observing Ultra–High Energy Cosmic Rays with Smartphones
    Speaker: Daniel Whiteson, UC Irvine
    Watch the lecture
  • The Remarriage of Pure Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
    Speaker: David Morrison, University of California Santa Barbara
    Watch the lecture

2014

2013

2012


2011

  • The Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope: Seeing the Universe Through Gamma-Ray Eyes
    Speaker: Elliott Bloom
    Watch the preview.
    Watch the lecture.
  • What Makes up the Dark Matter?
    Speaker: Blas Cabrera
    Watch the preview.
    Watch the lecture.
  • Cook's Tale: A Guide to Understanding New Materials
    Speaker: Paul Canfield
    Watch the lecture.
  • Listening to the Universe with Gravitational Waves
    Speaker: Daniel Holz
    Watch the preview.
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Hunt for the Elusive Higgs Boson
    Speaker: Ben Kilminster
    Watch the preview.
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Ocean's Cryptic Life
    Speaker: Thomas Kiorboe
    Watch the preview.
    Watch the lecture.
  • Gene Surfing and Survival of the Luckiest
    Speaker: David R. Nelson
    Watch the lecture .
    • Watch the preview.
  • The Physics of Human and Superhuman Vision
    Speaker: Phil Nelson
    Watch the preview.
    Watch the lecture.
  • Fluid Viscosity: From Maxwell to String Theory
    Speaker: Dam Thanh Son
    Watch the lecture.
  • Lasers, Micro-Lasers and Anti-Lasers
    Speaker: Douglas Stone
    Watch the lecture.
    • Watch the preview.
  • Dark Matter, the Search for 85% of the Mass in the Universe
    Speaker: Risa Wechsler
    Watch the lecture.
  • High-Temperature Superconductivity: Quantum Mechanics Meets Energy Efficiency
    Speaker: Ali Yazdani
    Watch the lecture.
  • Zooming into Life on the Nano Scale
    Speaker: Xiaowei Zhuang
    Watch the lecture.

2010

  • Exploring the Cosmos from the Moon
    Speaker: Jack Burns
    Watch the preview.
    Watch the lecture.
  • Birds Do It, Bees Do It; Physics and the Art of Attracting a Mate
    Speaker: Eric Dufresne
    Watch the preview.
    Watch the lecture.
  • What's the Matter? The Race for Clues in our Cold, Dark Universe
    Speaker: Jonathan Feng
    Watch the lecture.
    • Watch the preveiw.
  • The Limits of Knowledge: Philosophical and Practical Aspects of Building a Quantum Computer
    Speaker: Michael Freedman
    Watch the lecture.
  • Unveiling a Supermassive Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy
    Speaker: Andrea Ghez
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Large Hadron Collider: Living with the Uncertainty Principle
    Speaker: David E. Kaplan
    Watch the lecture.
  • Etch-a-Sketch Nanoelectronics
    Speaker: Jeremy Levy
    Watch the preview.
    Watch the lecture.
  • Biological Evolution: What it is and what it isn't
    Speaker: Joanna Masel
    Watch the preview.
    Watch the lecture.
  • Mysteries of Mass and Matter: Revealing Nature's Secrets with the Large Hadron Collider
    Speaker: Matthias Neubert
    Watch the preview.
    Watch the lecture.
  • From 0 to c in 60 Minutes: A Crash Course in Einstein, Featuring Planes, Trains and Automobiles
    Speaker: R. Shankar
    Watch the lecture.
    • Watch the preview.

2009

  • The Large Hadron Collider
    Speaker: Roger Bailey
    Watch the lecture.
  • Condensed Matter: The Small Frontier
    Speaker: Donald Eigler
    Watch the lecture.
  • Can Evolution Be Understood Quantitatively?
    Speaker: Daniel S. Fisher
    Watch the preview.
    Watch the lecture.
  • LHC: A Big Window to the Small World
    Speaker: Yuval Grossman
    Watch the lecture.
    • Watch the preview.
  • The Sounds of Spacetime: Black Holes, Early Universe, Cosmic Strings and Holographic Noise
    Speaker: Craig Hogan
    Watch the preview.
    Watch the lecture.
  • Einstein Rings and Giant Arcs: Mapping Dark Matter with Gravitational Lensing
    Speaker: Bhuvnesh Jain
    Watch the lecture.
  • Addressing America's Energy Challenges
    Speaker: Steve Koonin
    Watch the lecture
  • The Quantum Mechanics of Global Warming
    Speaker: John Bradley Marston
    Watch the preview.
    Watch the lecture.
  • Quantum Whirlpools: Tiny Vortices of Tireless Electrons
    Speaker: Kathryn Moler
    Watch the preveiw.
    Watch the lecture.
  • Knots, World-Lines, and Quantum Computation
    Speaker: Steven Simon
    Watch the preveiw
    Watch the lecture
  • Nature's Exquisite Nanomachines: The Dynamic and Varied City Plan of Living Cells
    Speaker: James Spudich
    Watch the lecture.
  • Life after Stellar Death: Suprenovae, Neutron Stars, Pulsars and Magnetars
    Speaker: Edward P. J. Van Den Heuvel
    Watch the lecture.
  • Dark Matters
    Speaker: Simon White
    Watch the preview
    Watch the lecture.

2008

  • The Dawn of Galaxy Creation: Its First Two Billion Years
    Speaker: Steven Beckwith
    Watch the lecture.
  • How Many M&Ms Are in That Jar and Why Does it Matter: Experiments with Colloids and Candies
    Speaker: Paul Chaikin
    Watch the lecture.
  • Visualizing Complex Electronic Quantum Matter at the Atomic Scale
    Speaker: J.C. Seamus Davis
    Watch the lecture.
  • Supermassive Black Holes Speaker: Timothy Heckman
  • Matter, Antimatter, and How We Came to be Here
    Speaker: Boris Kayser
    Watch the lecture.
  • Atomically Thin Carbon: From Revolutionary Electronics to the Core of Neutron Stars
    Speaker: Antonio Castro Neto
    Watch the lecture.
  • How Cells Decide What to Eat Speaker: Rob Phillips
    Watch the lecture.
  • Reaching for a Sustainable and Attainable Energy Future
    Speaker: Robert Rosner
    Watch the lecture.
  • Extrasolar Planets and the Search for Habitable Worlds
    Speaker: Sara Seager
    Watch the lecture.
  • CSI: Aspen Cosmic Scene Investigation
    Speaker: George Smoot
    Watch the lecture.
  • Coming Soon at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - the Higgs, Dark Matter and Maybe Even Black Holes or New Dimensions of Space
    Panel Discussion: Marcela Carena, Patrick Fox, Howard Haber, Elizabeth Simmons, Michael Turner, Dick Zerwas
    Watch the lecture.

2007

  • Energy and Extra Dimensions in Einstein's Universe
    Speaker: Lisa Randall
    Watch the lecture.
  • Quantum Mechanics in the Information age: New Bits, Qubits, and Knot bits
    Speaker: Charles Marcus
  • Neutrinos in Astrophysics: Ghostly Messegners of the Heavens
    Speaker: A. Baha Balantekin
    Watch the lecture.
  • Reflections from Outbursts of Supermassive Black Holes at the Centers of Galaxies
    Speaker: Christine Jones
    Watch the lecture.
  • Supernovae and the Life of the Cosmos
    Speaker: Richard Mc Cray
  • Dark Energy and the Runaway Universe
    Speaker: Alexei Filippenko
    Watch the lecture.
  • Can the Universe be captured in an Equation?
    Speaker: Robbert Kijdgraaf
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Future of Particle Physics
    Speaker: Piermaria J. Oddone
    Watch the lecture.
  • Superconductivity and Superfluidity: Life without Friction
    Speaker: Gordon Baym
    Watch the lecture.
  • Mitochondrial Sequences and the Migration History of Modern Humans
    Speaker: Gyan Bhanot
    Watch the lecture.

2006

  • The Sciense of the Ultracold
    Speaker: Randall Gardner
    Watch the lecture.
  • Hiding in the Mirror: The Mysterious Allure of Extra Dimensions
    Speaker: Lawrence Krauss
    Watch the lecture.
  • Exploring Cosmic Origins with the Next Generation of Telescopes
    Speaker: Leo Blitz
    Watch the lecture.
  • Quantum Universe
    Speaker: John Womersley
    Watch the lecture.
  • When Obsessions Collide: Golf and Physics
    Speaker: Rovert D. Grover
    Watch the lecture.
  • Quantum Money, Teleportation and Computation
    Speaker: Steven M. Girvin
    Watch the lecture.
  • Spooky Action at a Distance?
    Speaker: N. David Mermin
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Explosive Universe
    Speaker: Adam Burrows
    Watch the lecture.
  • Strings Everywhere?
    Speaker: Clifford V. Johnson
    Watch the lecture.

2005

  • Nanotechnology in Nature: Agility of Biomolecules Explored One at a Time
    Speaker: Yale E. Goldman
    Watch the lecture.
  • Levitation, Superconductivity & Time: Einstei–s Special Relativity
    Speaker: Francesco Fidecaro
    Watch the lecture.
  • Exoplanets, Yellowstone & Prospects for Life in the Universe
    Speaker: Geoffrey Marcy
    Watch the lecture.
    • Dark Matter & Dark Energy: From the Universe to the Laboratory
    Speaker: Sean Carroll
    Watch the lecture.
  • Einstein–s Vision & the Quantum Universe
    Speaker: James B. Hartle
    Watch the lecture.
  • Threats to the Future of US Science & Technology
    Speaker: Neal Lane
    Watch the lecture.
  • Genius and (Genius)2: Planck, Einstein & the Birth of Quantum Theory
    Speaker: A. Douglas stone
    Watch the lecture.
  • Bose-Einstein Condensation: Guantum Wierdness at the Lowerst Tempurature in the Universe
    Speaker: Carl E. Wieman
    Watch the lecture.
  • Secrets of the Old One: Motion & Light
    Speaker: Jeremy Bernstein
    Watch the lecture.
  • Secrets of the Old One: The Theory of Relativity
    Speaker: Jeremy Bernstein
    Watch the lecture.
  • Secrets of the Old One: Do Atoms Exist?
    Speaker: Jeremy Bernstein
    Watch the lecture.
  • Secrets of the Old One: The Quantum
    Speaker: Jeremy Bernstein
    Watch the lecture.
  • Warped Passages: Energy & Extra Dimensions in Einstein's Universe
    Speaker: Lisa Randall
    Watch the lecture.

2004

  • Novel Phenomena,Devices & Materials at the Nanoscal
    Speaker: David Goldhaber
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Violent High–Energy Universe
    Speaker: Vicky Gaspin
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Expanding Universe
    Speaker: P James E Peebles
    Watch the lecture.
  • Of Genes and Genomes
    Speaker: David Botstein
    Watch the lecture.
  • Fundamental Particles, Fundamental Questions
    Speaker: Elizabeth H Simmons
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Universe Live & in Concert
    Speaker: Mark Coles
    Watch the lecture.
  • Neutrinos Under Your Skin
    Speaker: Boris Kayser
    Watch the lecture.
  • Images of Our Milky Way Galaxy: Our Place in the Universe
    Speaker: Rosemary Wyse
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Arrow of Time
    Speaker: Joel Lebowits
    Watch the lecture.
  • Einstein in the Stars
    Speaker: J. Craig Wheeler
    Watch the lecture.
  • String Theory: Past, Present & Future
    Speaker: John H. Schwartz
    Watch the lecture.

2003

  • What is Matter and What is Life from a Physicist's Perspective: Conversation with the Dalai Lama
    Speaker: Steven Chu
  • The First Thing in the Universe
    Speaker: Tom Abel
    Watch the lecture.
  • Matters of Degrees: What Temperature Reveals About the Past, Present, Future of our Species, Planet, Universe
    Speaker: Gino Segre
    Watch the lecture.
  • From Black Holes to Light Waves to a New Astronomy
    Speaker: Lee S Finn
    Watch the lecture.
  • From Superconductors to the Theory of Everything: A Journey through the Physics of the Electron
    Speaker: Catherine Kallin
    Watch the lecture.
  • Messengers of the Extreme Universe
    Speaker: Angela Olinto
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Sun Shines Even at 3AM: The Magical Story of Neutrinos and the Scientists Who Found Them
    Speaker: Pierre Ramond
    Watch the lecture.
  • Magnetism: A Guided Tour From Ancient Greece to Modern Aspen
    Speaker: Dieter Vollhardt
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Symmetry (or Lack of It) between Matter & Antimatter
    Speaker: Helen R. Quinn
    Watch the lecture.
  • Mapping the Heavens: The Universe Revealed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
    Speaker: Joshua Frieman
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Fragrant Mind: How the Brain Senses Scents
    Speaker: Lawrence Katz
    Watch the lecture.

2002

  • Icefishing for Neutrinos at the South Pole
    Speaker: Francis Halzen
    Watch the lecture.
  • Invasions in Particle Physics
    Speakers: Maria Spiropulu and Joseph Lykken
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Real Story Behind Stopping Light
    Speaker: Ronald Walsworth
    Watch the lecture.
  • In the Beginning
    Speaker: Michael S. Turner
    Watch the lecture.
  • Light & Life
    Speaker: Lubert Stryer
    Watch the lecture.
  • Higgs Boson: The Origins of Mass
    Speaker: Marcela Carena
    Watch the lecture.
  • Why Climb Mountains When You Can (Quantum) Tunnel Through Them? Solving Hard Problems from Magnets to Protein Folding
    Speaker: Thomas F. Rosenbaum
    Watch the lecture.
  • Why Things Usually Hum Equally in Every Octave
    Speaker: Michael Weissmam
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Physics of the Heart
    Speaker: John Wikswo
    Watch the lecture.

2001

  • Why is the Universe Matter–Animatter Asymmetr
    Speaker: Roberto D. Peccei
    Watch the lecture.
  • Visualizing Single Molecules with Lasers
    Speaker: W E Moerner
    Watch the lecture.
  • Complex Adaptive Matter: Science for the New Millennium
    Speaker: David Pines
    Watch the lecture.
  • Universe in a Box
    Speaker: Matthias Steinmetz
    Watch the lecture.
  • Supermassive Black Holes in Galaxies: Chicken or the Egg?
    Speaker: Thomas Prince
    Watch the lecture.
  • Making the Most out of Moore: Physics and the Information Age
    Speaker: Cherry A. Murray
    Watch the lecture.
  • Living Nightmares: Facing the Growing Threat of Biological Weapons
    Speaker: Steven Block
    Watch the lecture.
  • Taming Light with Cold Atoms: Light at Bicycle Speed...and slower yet!
    Speaker: Lene Vestergaard
    Watch the lecture.

2000

  • 1+1=3? The Frontier Science of Emergent Materials
    Speaker: Piers Coleman
    Watch the lecture.
  • Physics at the Turn of the Century
    Speaker: Thomas Appelquist
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Origins of Cancer in Humans
    Speaker: Arnold J. Levine
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Size and Age of the Universe
    Speaker: Wendy Freedman
    Watch the lecture.
  • Getting a Charge out of Shape–Changing Crystals
    Speaker: David Vanderbit
    Watch the lecture.
  • Violence in the Graveyard of the Universe
    Speaker: Rovin Stebbins
    Watch the lecture.
  • Einstein's Biggest Blunder?
    Speaker: Lawrence Krauss
  • New View of the Distant Universe with Chandra X–Ray Observatory
    Speaker: Belinda Wilkes
    Watch the lecture.
  • When You Come to the Fork in the Road Take it– Yogi Berra's Guide to the Quantum World
    Speaker: Ramamurti Shankar
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Theory of Everything
    Speaker: Robert B Laughlin
  • New Dimensions to Einstein's Gravity
    Speaker: Lisa Randall
    Watch the lecture.

1999

  • This Not So Crazy World: Order in Randomness
    Speaker: Raymond Orbach
  • Thinking about Complexity
    Speaker: L. M. Simmons, Jr.
    Watch the lecture.
  • How to Hunt a Wild Neutrino
    Speaker: Janet Conrad
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Origin of the Galaxies: Studying Evolution with a Time Machine
    Speaker: Simon White
    Watch the lecture.
  • Journey to the Coldest Place in the Universe, What Atoms Do When It's Really Cold
    Speaker: Gordon Baym
    Watch the lecture.
  • Jointly sponsered Historical Society/Physics/Music lectures on the 50–year history of the Music Assoc of Aspen 7/1,15,29
  • Seeing the Invisible: Dark Matter in the Universe
    Speaker: J. Anthony Tyson
    Watch the lecture.
  • Exploring Forbidden Paths: Tunneling into High Termperature Superconductors
    Speaker: Laura H Greene
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Origin of Mass
    Speaker: Jonathan Bagger
    Watch the lecture.
  • Sonuluminescence: Star in a Jar, Creation of Light from Sound
    Speaker: Seth Putterman
    Watch the lecture.
  • New developments in the art and science of skiing and snowboarding
    Speaker: David Lind
    Watch the lecture.
  • Emergence, Reductionism & the Seamless Web: When & Why is Science Right?
    Speaker: Philip Warren Anderson
    Watch the lecture.

1998

  • for KUSA
    Speaker: Maggie De Wolf
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Quest for Gravitational Waves: Fulfilling Einstein's Vision
    Speaker: Peter Saulson
    Watch the lecture.
  • Young Stars, Planetary Systems & the Search for Life in the Universe
    Speaker: Steven V.W.
    Watch the lecture.
  • Fractal Dimensions & the Physics of Crumbled Bodies
    Speaker: David Nelson
    Watch the lecture.
  • Probing the Universe with the Hubble Space Telescope
    Speakers: Robert Williams and Claude Nicollier
    Watch the lecture.
  • Bose–Einstein Condensation: Creating a New Form of Matter at the Coldest Temperature in the universe
    Speaker: Carl E. Wieman
    Watch the lecture.
  • New Developments in the Art & Science of Skiing & Snowboarding
    Speaker: David Lind
    Watch the lecture.
  • Medical Imaging with Laser–Polarized 3-He and 129–Xe
    Speaker: William Harper
    Watch the lecture.
  • What Makes the Big Bang So Big?
    Speaker: Craig Hogan
    Watch the lecture.
  • Small is Beautiful: Silicon Micro Machines for Science & Technology
    Speaker: David Bishop
    Watch the lecture.

1997

  • Measuring the Size & Age of the Universe with the Hubble Space Telescope
    Speaker: Robert Kennicutt
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Wonders of Nature in Less than 3 Dimensions
    Speaker: Rovert J. Birgeneau
    Watch the lecture.
  • Neutrinos: Importance & Peculiarities of the Nearest Thing to Nothing
    Speaker: David O. Caldwell
    Watch the lecture.
  • Listening to Einstein's Universe
    Speaker: Gary Sanders
    Watch the lecture.
  • Aspen Science Fair
    Speaker: Bernice Durand
    Watch the lecture.
  • Interviews with Famous Physicists
    Speaker: Bernice Durand
    Watch the lecture.
  • Blue Skies, Rainbows & UV Rays
    Speaker: Bernice Durand
    Watch the lecture.
  • Poking & Cajoling Quarks, The Fundamental Particles
    Speaker: Melissa Franklin
    Watch the lecture.
  • Duality, Space–Time & Quantum Mechanics
    Speaker: Edward Witten
    Watch the lecture.
  • Predictablity & Chaos
    Speaker: Pierre C. Hohenberg
    Watch the lecture.
  • Space & Time are Relative
    Speaker: Bernice Durand
    Watch the lecture.
  • How the Brain is Like & Different from a Computer
    Speaker: Charles Stevens
    Watch the lecture.
  • Space & Time are Curved Watch the lecture.

1996

  • Using Tractor Beams to Study Biological Motors
    Speaker: Steven Block
    Watch the lecture.
  • 1896 to 1986: A Century of High Energy Physics
    Speaker: Roy Frederick
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Physics of Star Trek
    Speaker: Lawrence Krauss
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Hunt for Black Holes
    Speaker: Philip Charles
    Watch the lecture.
  • Shadows of Creation: The Dark Matter of the Universe
    Speaker: David Schramm
  • From Simplicity to Complexity
    Speaker: Murray Gell–Mann
    Watch the lecture.
  • Does God Throw Dice in Black Holes?
    Speaker: Stephen Hawking
    Watch the lecture.
  • Space-Time Since Einstein (Strings)
    Speaker: Brian Greene
    Watch the lecture.
  • Quantum Cryptography
    Speaker: Charles Bennett
    Watch the lecture.

1995

  • Black Holes & Gravitational Waves: Dark Side of the Universe
    Speaker: Kip S. Thorne
    Watch the lecture.
  • Quantum Structures and & Their Physics: Principles Underlying Layered Lasers
    Speaker: Shirley Ann Jackson
    Watch the lecture.
  • Big telescopes look at the big bang
    Speaker: Craig Hogan
    Watch the lecture.

1994

  • Three Ways of Misreading Physics
    Speaker: Sidney Coleman
    Watch the lecture.
  • Building Tomorrow's Electronics: Legols for the Materials Scientist
    Speaker: Thomas F.
  • The Hubble Space Telescope: A view of the Universe
    Speaker: Mario Livio
  • Is there any way to make public school science teaching better?
    Speaker: Michael Fowler
  • Women in Science: Does Gender Matter?
    Speaker: Londa Schiebinger
  • The Unsolved Mysteries of Particle Physics
    Speaker: Thomas Appelquist
    Watch the lecture.
  • What Does Superconductivity Have to do with Elementary Particle Physics? Everthing!
    Speaker: Robert B Laughlin
  • Neutron Stars: The Ultimate Metrics of Time, Space & Mass/Energy?
    Speaker: Joseph H. Taylor
    Watch the lecture.

1993

  • Cosmology and Culture; Implications of Recent Cosmological Discoveries
    Speaker: Joel Primack
  • Order in Disorder; Spatial Patterns, Chaos, and Turbulence
    Speaker: Michael Cross
  • More Questions than Questions about Schools
    Speaker: George Stranahan
  • Searching for Superconductivity
    Speaker: David Pines
  • Cosmological Mysteries - Myth or Science
    Speaker: Jeremiah P. Ostriker
  • Taking the Measure of the Universe: How Big? How Old?
    Speaker: Robert P. Kirshner
    Watch the lecture.
  • Super Theories & Super Colliders
    Speaker: John H. Schwarz
    Watch the lecture.
  • Relaxation at the angle of repose: Do avalanches explain the fractal nature of the universe?
    Speaker: Sidney R Nagel
    Watch the lecture.

1992

  • Getting Creative Ideas
    Speaker: Murray Gell-Mann
  • Wiggles from Creation: News from the Big Bang
    Speaker: P James E Peebles
  • The Future of the Universe
    Speaker: Stephen Hawking
    Watch the lecture.
  • In Search of the Ultimate Structure
    Speaker: Pierre Ramond
  • Is Theoretical Physics Useful?
    Speaker: Susan N.
  • The Space Program in the New Russia
    Speaker: Rashid Sunyaev
    Watch the lecture.
  • How to Find a Black Hole
    Speaker: Jonathan E. Grindlay
  • Particle Physics in the Cosmos: Beginning & End of Universe
    Speaker: Lawrence Krauss
    Watch the lecture.
  • High Temperature Superconductors, Squids & Hearts
    Speaker: John W. Clark
    Watch the lecture.

1991

  • Phase Transitions & Critical Phenomena
    Speaker: Michael E. Fisher
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Big Bang Really Happened
    Speaker: Michael S. Turner
    Watch the lecture.
  • Black Holes Up Close & Personal
    Speaker: J. Craig Wheeler
    Watch the lecture.
  • The Health of American Science & Education
    Speaker: Leon Max Lederman
    Watch the lecture.
  • Primeval Fireball
    Speaker: David Wilkinson
    Watch the lecture.

1990

  • Quasi Crystals: A New Phase of Matter
    Speaker: Paul J. Steinhardt
    Watch the lecture.
  • Do Computers Think?
    Speaker: John Joseph Hopfield
    Watch the lecture.
  • What is Solid State Physics? Quantum Mechanics in Your Everyday Life
    Speaker: A. Douglas Stone
  • Probing the Creation: Tests for the Big Bang
    Speaker: David Schramm
  • Supercolliders, Superconductors, Supernovas, and Economic Development (in Aspen Colorado)
    Speaker: Leon Max Lederman
  • Technology of 21st Century
    Speaker: Paul M Horn
    Watch the lecture.

1989

  • The Fastest Pulsars in the Universe
    Speaker: Jacob Shaham
  • Patterns and Chaos: Central Ideas in Non-Linear Science
    Speaker: Jerry P Gollub
  • The Mystery of Neutrinos from the Sun
    Speaker: S. Peter Gollub
  • Druk Yol, The Gragon Kingdom
    Speaker: Jeremy Bernstein
  • High Temperature Superconductivity
    Speaker: M. Brian Maple
  • Black Holes and Their Children, Baby Universes
    Speaker: Stephen Hawking
  • Global Warming: A View from the Rockies
    Speaker: John Harte
  • Fronteir Science at Very Low Temperatures
    Speaker: Robert W Richardson
  • Big Bang Revisited
    Speaker: William Alfred Fowler
  • Superconductors, Supercolliders, Supernovas and Economic Development in Aspen
    Speaker: Leon Max Lederman

1988

  • Superstrings - A Theory of Everything?
    Speaker: David Gross
    Watch the lecture.
  • A Thousand Years of Popular Views of Astronomical Discoveries
    Speaker: Malvin Avram
  • Psycho - Sociology of the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC)
    Speaker: Peter Carruthers
  • Shadows of Creation: The Large Scale Structure of the Universe
    Speaker: David Schramm
  • High Temperature Superconductivity: The Challenge and the Promise
    Speaker: David Pines
  • Here Comes the Sun: The Cuzco-Machu Picchu Connections
    Speaker: David Dearborn
    Watch the lecture.
  • High Temperature Super Conductors: A New State of Matter?
    Speaker: Robert B Laughlin
    Watch the lecture.
  • 2500 Years of Particle Physics: The Latest to the Super Collider
    Speaker: Leon Max Lederman
    Watch the lecture.
  • Supernova 1987: The Supernova of a Lifetime
    Speaker: Robert P. Kirshner
    Watch the lecture.

1987

  • Before the Big Bang - date unkown
    Speaker: Heinz R. Pagels
  • A Voyage to Lhasa - date unkown
    Speaker: Jeremy Bernstein
  • Superstring Theory
    Speaker: John H. Schwarz
  • The Supernova of 1987
    Speaker: David Schramm
    Watch the lecture.

1986

  • Title unlisted
    Speaker: Marvin L. Goldberger
  • Scientist as Educator
    Speaker: William Frazer
  • Recollections of a Native Adventurer
    Speaker: Robert Craig
  • Sequencing the Human Genome
    Speaker: George Bell
  • The World in which We Live
    Speaker: Robert O. Andersom
  • Physicists against Star Wars: David vs. Goliath
    Speaker: Philip warren
  • Art and Physics
    Speaker: Robert Rathbun
  • Is Everything in the Universe Composed of Superstrings?
    Speaker: Murray Gell-Mann
    Watch the lecture.
  • 3 Degrees Above Zero
    Speaker: Jeremy Bernstein
  • The Secrets of Stradivari's Violins
    Speaker: William F. Fry
  • The Big Bang: The Creation of the Universe
    Speaker: David Schramm

1985

  • From Atom Smashers to Quark Smashers: The Search for the fundamental properties of nature
    Speaker: James Watson Cronin
  • What are Nature's Building Blocks?
    Speaker: Murray Gell-Mann

1971

  • Gravitation, Nature's Weakest Force - date not certain - AIHS speaker series
    Speaker: Joseph Weber
  • Life and Personality of Einstein - date not certain - AIHS speaker series
    Speaker: Jeremy Bernstein

1970

  • The Horizons of Physics
    Speaker: Murray Gell-Mann
  • The Application of Physics
    Speaker: Hans Emil
  • The Funding of Physics
    Speaker: Robert Rathbun
  • The Aspen Center for Physics
    Speaker: George Stranahan
  • White Teacher, Black Students: The Problem of Third World Colleges
    Speaker: William Frazer
  • Darwin vs. Newton: Models for Scientific Theorists
    Speaker: Murray Gell-Mann
  • Some Mountains of Asia
    Speaker: Jeremy Bernstein

1969

  • Why Anti-Ballistic Missles Will Not Contribute to the Security of the U.S.
    Speaker: Hans Bethe

1966

  • The Role of Scientists in Decision Making
  • The Problems of Cities
  • Modern Ethics (moderated by Mortimer Alder)
  • Science and Government: The Moon Shot

1962

  • Neutrino Physics
    Speaker: Robert R. Lewis
  • Elementary Particles
    Speaker: Loyal Durand
  • Soviet Science
    Speaker: Robert Marshak
  • Helium Three
    Speaker: Henry Primakoff