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Re: What Physicists REALLY Think (of the future of physics)



Not to beat this thread into the ground, but rather than start a new thread on the same general topic....
 
Today I stumbled across a news item in the Dec 2004 issue of Scientific American giving an overview of a conference called "The Future of Physics" held at the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics, Univ. of Santa Barbara, in Oct 2004 for the institute's 25th anniversary.  The conference audio and slides can be found at either:
 
Included in the conference were some discussions of the relation of physics to biology. I did not happen to find audio of the panel discussion re biology very interesting (except perhaps for the speakers contrasting current views vs. 25 yrs ago), but the final hour-long talk by David Gross (Director of the institute) was more interesting to me. He presented 25 problems for the future of physics, culled from suggestions submitted by attendees. Topics ranged from cosmology to particle physics to string theory to biology. One was the question of whether biology required new mathematics or not. Gross mentions someone's name in connection with this idea, but I couldn't recognize it...it sounded phonetically like "Lipsha Bear" to me. If anyone happens to hear it and knows who it is, please let us know. The talk is an hour long....I'd say the biology questions occur around 45 minutes into the talk.
 
Regards,
Tim