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David Helfand, chair of the department of astronomy and astrophysics at Columbia University and former Sackler Distinguished Visiting Astronomer at Cambridge, will give two talks in a residency on campus today and Friday.
He will discuss “The Universal Timekeeper” 8 p.m. today in Oechsle Hall room 224 and “The Cooling of Neutron Stars” noon-1 p.m. Friday in Gagnon Lecture Hall, Hugel Science Center room 100.
Sponsored by the Physics Club, the events are free and open to the public. Refreshments will follow Thursday’s talk, and free pizza and drinks will be provided at the Friday lecture.
“The Universal Timekeeper” is described as “a one-hour course on using atomic nuclei as tools to reconstruct the history of everything from art forgeries to human diet to climate to the universe.” On Friday, Helfand will talk about a supernova observed by Chinese astrologers in 1181 AD that was observed again recently with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. He will explain the chain events connecting these two observations.
Helfand joined Columbia in 1977 and received the 2002 Great Teacher Award from the Society of Columbia Graduates. He has served two terms as co-director of Columbia’s astrophysics laboratories. His primary research interests include large-scale structure as derived from radio surveys; the origin and evolution of neutron stars and supernova remnants; and active galactic nuclei and the X-ray background.
A graduate of Amherst College, Helfand received his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts. He was appointed a professor of physics at Columbia in 1987 and a professor of astronomy in 1992. He is a regular contributor to Astronomical Journal, Astrophysical Journal, Nature, and Monthly Notes of the Royal Astronomical Society. He had a weekly stint on the Discovery Channel program “Science News,” discussing the latest astronomical discoveries, and has appeared on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.”
In the next Physics Club talk, Brett Fadem of the department of physics and astronomy at Colby College will give a lecture noon Thursday, Feb. 12, in Gagnon Lecture Hall.