On the afternoon of May 13, Prof. Murray Gell-Mann, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1969, was invited to give a lecture Nature Conformable to Herself to more than 300 students and faculty members of the School of Physics.
Before the lecture, Prof. Lu Gang, Chair of the University Board, had a meeting and communication with Prof. Gell-Mann.
Instead of the quark model and the quantum chromodynamics initiated by him, Prof. Gell-Mann gave a lecture on his understanding of physics in a philosophical way. He said, a beautiful theory is more likely to be correct, and a correct theory appears concise and elegant. Physical laws are not invented by human beings. They are really there and are waiting for people to discover and present in elegant forms. Physical laws are just like the skin of an onion, he said. In his opinion, there's some resemblance between theories at different scales, which is 'nature conformable to herself'. And there is also some resemblance between physical laws in different fields, and this may imply the possible existence of the Grand Unification Theory.
After his speech, Prof. Gell-Mann answered students' questions.
The Series of Erudition Lectures were initiated by the School of Physics since 2008 in order to build a better academic environment. Masters of physics were invited to give lectures here regularly, which greatly promoted students' interest in physics and led them earlier into the realm of science.
From left: Prof. Luo Jun, Prof. Murray Gell-Mann and Prof. Lu Gang
Attentive audiences in Prof. Gell-Mann's lecture
