Public Lectures

Since 2005, the Dynasty Foundation has been organizing a series of public lectures on physics, mathematics, biology, and the social sciences. These are unique events: world-famous scientists and scholars who are doing the hands-on scholarship and research of today bring their work to the general public.

A frame from James Watson's presentation, at his lecture, "DNA and the Brain: In Search of Mental Disorder Genes," 3 July 2008, Moscow House of Scientists

In 2005, the Foundation organized the first public lectures on physics in contemporary Russia with the cooperation of the International Center for Fundamental Physics, Moscow. The lectures took place on April 17, 2005, in the conference hall of the Lebedev Physical Institute and were a huge success with the public.

The first lecture, Black Holes and the Structure of Space-Time, was delivered by Professor Juan Maldacena of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. This visit to Russia by a world-class scientist able to communicate the latest breakthroughs in physics in an accessible way not only caught the attention of the scientific community, but also was a highlight of the year for everyone interested in science.

The audience was no less impressed by the second lecture—Dark Matter and Dark Energy in the Universe, delivered by the preeminent Russian physicist Valery Rubakov (Institute for Nuclear Research, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow).

The Dynasty Foundation Public Lectures have become a tradition.

In 2006, the second series of public lectures on physics and mathematics took place. David Gross, the 2004 Nobel Prize Laureate in Physics, read a lecture entitled, The Coming Revolutions in Fundamental Physics, while Academician Vladimir Arnold spoke about The Complexity of Finite Sequences of 0 and 1 and the Geometry of Finite Functional Spaces. The lectures were again enormously popular: nine hundred people gathered in the concert hall of the Academy of Sciences to hear them, while more than three hundred people watched the live stream on the Elements website.

In 2007, Andrei Linde, Professor of Physics at Stanford University and one of the proponents of the inflationary universe theory, read a lecture entitled, The Many Faces of the Universe.

In July 2008, the lecture by James Watson, the Nobel Laureate and American biologist who co-discovered the structure of DNA with Francis Crick, was a stunning success. Around two thousand people came to hear his talk, DNA and the Brain: In Search of Mental Disorder Genes.

These public lectures are also accessible for those people who cannot attend in person. Some of the lectures are broadcast live on the website Elements (Rus.). Transcripts and videos of past lectures can also be found on the website.

Since 2006, public lectures have also been incorporated into our Science Days popular science festivals.

John Cromwell Mather, 2006 Nobel Laureate in Physics, lectured on “From the Big Bang to the orbital supertelescope JWST(James Webb Space Telescope)and new Nobel prizes” which was directly broadcast from NASA October 27, 2009. The new joint project of the Dynasty Foundation and RIA Novosti—a cycle of open public lectures of topmost scientists accessible in any part of Russia on the internet Science Without Borders—thus began.