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Beane joins UNH
The University of New Hampshire recently named Silas R. Beane ’88 assistant professor of physics. He is affiliated with the physics department’s nuclear physics and theoretical physics groups, which conduct basic research on the nature of the fundamental particles and their interactions.
Previously, Beane was a research assistant professor at the University of Washington and a fellow at the National Institute for Nuclear Theory. Before that, he held postdoctoral positions in the nuclear theory groups at both the University of Washington and the University of Maryland, as well as the nuclear/particle theory group at DukeUniversity.
Currently, Beane is involved in theoretical research whose ultimate goal is to establish contact between nuclear physics and quantum chromodynamics (QCD)—the gauge field theory of interacting quarks and gluons that underlies the “strong” nuclear force.
“Quantum chromodynamics is very hard to solve analytically,” said Beane. “However, there has recently been remarkable progress in simulating QCD with computers using lattice gauge theory, which involves replacing space-time with a grid and using Montecarlo integration methods.”
In September, Beane gave a talk on chiral dynamics for lattice QCD at the Chiral Dynamics 2003 conference in Bonn, Germany.
A physics graduate, Beane received a doctorate in physics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1994. It was an experience that led him to appreciate his Lafayette education even more highly.
“I took quite a few courses from famous people who made a real mess of things in the classroom, and who would refuse to give office hours to boot,” he says. “That led me to appreciate the essentially unlimited attention that I had from professors while at Lafayette. An independent study carried out under the supervision of physics professor Brad Antanaitis helped convince me to pursue fundamental research in physics.”