Andrew Chamblin Memorial Lecture: colour, new dimensions and the geometry of physics

Frank Wilczek (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is one of the leading theoretical physicists of our time. He has worked on a wide range of topics, ranging across particle physics, astrophysics and condensed matter physics. He is known, among other things, for the discovery of asymptotic freedom, the development of quantum chromodynamics, the invention of axions, and the discovery and exploitation of new forms of quantum statistics (anyons). For the discovery of asymptotic freedom he received the Nobel Prize in 2004 together with his Ph.D. supervisor David Gross and David Politzer.

A theme of his successful popular book 'The Lightness of Being' is that the ancient contrast between celestial Light and earthy Matter has been transcended. In modern physics, all the stuff out there is unified into a "Being" more like the traditional idea of light than the traditional idea of matter.