A Century of Ideas
Perspectives from Leading Scientists of the 20th Century

Shortly after its inauguration in 1985 the Birla Science Centre, Hyderabad, India, started a series of lectures by Nobel Laureates and other scientists of international renown, mostly on Physics and Astronomy. The present collection mostly consists of lectures on frontier topics. The transcript of each lecture is preceded by a short biography of the Nobel Laureate/Scientist in question. The lectures are aimed at a wide non-specialist but higher educated audience.

Shortly after its inauguration in 1985 the Birla Science Centre, Hyderabad, India, started a series of lectures by Nobel Laureates and other scientists of international renown, usually in Physics and Astronomy, sometimes in Life Sciences and Chemistry.

The present collection mostly consists of lectures on frontier topics. The transcript of each lecture is preceded by a short biography of the Nobel Laureate/Scientist in question.

The lectures are aimed at, and accessible to a wide non-specialist but higher educated audience.

Fifty Years of Cosmology; Fred Hoyle. Science as an Adventure; Hermann Bondi. The Early Universe; William Fowler. The Long-Term Future of Particle Accelerators; Simon van der Meer. Energy and Evolution; George Porter. The Wonders of Pulsars; Antony Hewish. Is the Future Given? Changes in our Description of Nature; Ilya Prigogine. Bubbles, Foams and other Fragile Objects; J.-P. De Gennes. Beyond the Standard Model: Will it be the Theory of Everything? Yuval Ne’eman. Living Joyfully with Complexity in Chemistry and Culture; Roald Hoffmann. A Confrontation with Infnity; Gerard ’tHooft. The Creative and Unpredictable Interaction of Science and Technology; Charles Townes. The Link Between Neutrino Masses and Proton Decay in Supersymmetric Unification; Jogesh Pati. The Nature of Discovery in Physics; Douglas D. Osheroff. Symmetry in the Micro World – A Conversation with Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner; B.G. Sidharth

B.G. Sidharth got his B.Sc. (Mathematics Honors), M.Sc. and PhD from Calcutta University. After working for several years in Quantum Scattering, Dr. Sidharth’s work entered on the fundamental problems facing Physics today. His 1997 papers, contrary to the ruling paradigm, predicted a dark energy driven accelerating Universe with a small cosmological constant. Remarkably, this was confirmed in 1998. His work deals with fuzzy spacetime and the unification of interactions and similar problems within this context. Besides a large number of research publications in international journals, Dr. Sidharth also authored and edited a number of books. In addition he has lectured widely in the United States, Canada, Europe and other places.



B.G. Sidharth is the founder-director of the B.M. Birla Science Centre, Hyderabad, India, and its constituent, the International Institute for Applicable Mathematics and Information Sciences, Hyderabad, and Udine, Italy. He was associated with the International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy, for many years having been a Senior Associate. Dr. Sidharth is on the Editorial / Advisory boards of international journals, institutes and award committees. Last but not least he played host to many Nobel Laureates and other physicists of World importance.