Woods Lecture Series: Katherine Freese - The Mystery of Dark Matter in the Universe

Katherine Freese comes to Butler University on Thursday, October 22, for a talk titled The Mystery of Dark Matter in the Universe. It's part of the J. James Woods Lecture Series, which Butler brings in to bring prominent mathematicians and scientists to campus to speak on theories at the frontier of their disciplines.

Freese is a theoretical cosmologist and astroparticle physicist who spends her time trying to identify the dark matter and dark energy that permeate the universe and building a model of the early universe immediately after the Big Bang. She's the Director of the Weinberg Institute for Theoretical Physics and the Kodosky Endowed Chair of Physics at the University of Texas at Austin, and a Guest Professor at Stockholm University. She's also a Member of the National Academy of Sciences and the author of The Cosmic Cocktail: Three Parts Dark Matter.

In 2019, the American Physical Society gave her the Lilienfeld Prize for ground-breaking research at the interface of cosmology and particle physics, and for her tireless efforts to communicate the excitement of physics to the general public. That last part is exactly why this works as a public talk: she's spent a good chunk of her career translating the most abstract parts of the cosmos for people who aren't professional physicists.

The talk is at Shelton Auditorium on Butler's campus, 4600 Sunset Ave, Indianapolis, IN 46208. It starts at 7:30 PM and is free and open to the public, with no ticket required.