Posted on Monday, March 24, 2008
Dr. David Newman will give Westminster College's 2008 Woods Memorial Lecture Friday, April 11, at 4:15 p.m. in Phillips Lecture Hall in Hoyt Science Resources Center. The presentation is free and open to the public.
Newman will speak on "The Aurora Borealis: Its Beauty, Causes and Effects," which he describes as "a magnificent, mysterious feature of the northern sky." The presentation includes pictures of remarkable auroral displays.
Newman is the author of nearly 100 articles on his specialties: complex systems; non-linear dynamics; and turbulence, particularly as applied to plasmas physics.
Newman earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Pittsburgh, spent over two years as a Peace Corps volunteer with his wife in Kenya, and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He joined the Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a Wigner Fellow and was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. He has been a distinguished lecturer for the Division of Plasma Physics of the American Physical Society.
He is currently involved in an active research program and is a professor of physics at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, where he teaches both undergraduate and graduate classes. He makes science outreach/education presentations to audiences from kindergarten to Elderhostel, including teacher training sessions.
The Woods Memorial Lecture honors Dr. Robert Woods, Westminster College professor of physics from 1947-1972. It is made possible by a gift from the Woods family that has been supplemented over the years by gifts from friends and alumni.
Contact Dr. Samuel Lightner, Westminster College professor and chair of the Department of Physics, at (724) 946-7204 or e-mail lightner@westminster.edu for additional information.
