The Vancouver Institute, an all-volunteer, non-profit, public educational forum, has been in existence since 1916 when it was founded by UBC’s first president, Dr. Frank Wesbrook.  The Institute’s mandate is to provide free public lectures by world experts in a broad range of disciplines every Saturday evening during the fall and winter academic terms at UBC.

To celebrate the joint Centennial of UBC and The Institute, we are presenting a lecture by Dr. Neil Turok, Director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Formerly Professor of Physics at Princeton and Chair of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge University, Dr. Turok, one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists, will speak on the topic of “The Astonishing Simplicity of Everything.”

The public is invited to attend this free lecture which is co-sponsored by UBC’s Physics Department and UBC’s Alumni Association.

For more information, please visit the Vancouver Institute’s website.

Admission: Free

Dr. Turok’s research focuses on developing fundamental theories of cosmology and new observational tests. With Stephen Hawking, he discovered instanton solutions describing the birth of inflationary universes.  With Paul Steinhardt, he developed an alternative, cyclic cosmology, whose predictions are so far in agreement with observational tests.  Born in South Africa, Dr. Turok founded the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), a network of five centres across Africa.  For his scientific discoveries and his work founding and developing AIMS, Dr. Turok was awarded a TED Prize in 2008.