Richard Wilson, a research professor of physics at Harvard University, will discuss problems with nuclear protection and safety and provide alternatives to dealing with the threat of terrorism.
"A physicist knows few absolutes," Wilson said in an online abstract, "Making the country absolutely safe is not possible and attempts to do so may be counterproductive." Wilson's seminar "A Physicist's Approach to Terrorism," will provide a physicist's point of view in regards to the use of nuclear weapons in terrorism, "I will be addressing issues that everyone should be interested in," Wilson said. "One particular group's answers are not sufficient, I want to spark individual thought."
The lecture is sponsored by UNM's Center for Advancement Studies and will take place tomorrow at 3:30 p.m. in Dane Smith Hall.
Wilson said he has given three presentations at major conferences in the last 13 months about physics and terrorism. The conferences include the Global Foundation in London and Florida, the Probabilistic Safety Analysis and Measurement in Puerto Rico and the Forum on Global Emergencies at the Ettore Majorana Institute in Erice, Sicily.
Wilson earned his Ph.D. in physics from Oxford University in 1949 and has been a professor at Harvard University since 1955. He is a member of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis and the Science and International Affairs Program at the Kennedy School of Government.
Wilson serves on the board of directors of the Andrey Sakharov Foundation of New York, which devotes itself to human rights and human progress. Because of his work for the foundation, the chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Belarus asked him to help found the International Sakharov College of Radioecology in Minsk, Belarus.
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Wilson said his greatest pleasure is his work with the people of Bangladesh. He helped with the purification and distribution of clean water to more than 200 villages.
Wilson has also done work at the Los Alamos National Laboratories. He is currently participating in high-level nuclear and military waste disposal, the non-proliferation of nuclear and biological weapons and the sequestering of carbon to avoid and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Wilson's presentation tomorrow is part of a weekly seminar series organized by Sudhakar Prasad, director of UNM's Center for Advanced Studies.
"He is a person to provide a scientist's perspective to the subject of terrorism and should be of interest to a broad spectrum of people," Prasad said.
The center also arranges workshops, invites visiting researchers to lecture and promotes the initiatives that support collaborations among UNM's five participating science departments. Wilson's lecture is one of the first for the spring semester.
The event is free and open to the public.
