"Brilliant Blunders"
Even the greatest scientists have made some serious blunders. "Brilliant Blunders" concerns the evolution of life on Earth, of the Earth itself, of stars, and of the universe as a whole. In this talk, I shall concentrate on and analyze major errors committed by such luminaries as Charles Darwin, Linus Pauling, and Albert Einstein. I will also scrutinize the various types of blunders and attempt to identify their causes. Most importantly, however, I'll argue that blunders are not only inevitable, but rather part and parcel of progress in science and other creative enterprises.
About the speaker:
Dr Mario Livio is a senior astrophysicist at the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute. He joined the Institute in 1991 as head of the Archive Branch, and also served as the Head of the Institute’s Science Division. Prior to coming to the Institute, he completed his undergraduate studies (majoring in physics and mathematics) at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, his M.Sc. degree (in theoretical particle physics) at the Weizmann Institute, and his Ph.D. (in theoretical astrophysics) at Tel-Aviv University. He was a professor of physics in the physics department of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology from 1981 until 1991.
In the past decade, Mario focused particularly on the topics of supernova explosions and their use in cosmology to determine the rate of expansion of the Universe, on the nature of “dark energy”, on the formation of black holes and the possibility to extract energy from them, on the formation of planets in disks around young stars, and on the emergence of intelligent life in the Universe. Mario has published over 400 scientific papers.
Dr Livio lectures very frequently to the public. He has given more than 25 full-day seminars to the public at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C, and numerous lectures at venues such a the Hayden Planetarium in New York, The Maryland Institute College of Art, The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, The Glasgow Planetarium, TEDxMidAtlantic, and many more. He is also interviewed often in the media, including two appearances on “60 Minutes.” Livio’s book “The Golden Ratio” won him the “Peano Prize” for 2003, and the “International Pythagoras Prize” for 2004, as the best popular book on mathematics.