Public Lectures

Physics for the Inquiring Mind

Public LecturesKITP Public Lectures connect you with people and research that is transforming our understanding of the universe. This popular series of 3-4 public lectures each year takes advantage of the presence of the many distinguished scientists who visit KITP to collaborate on the most fascinating and challenging questions in their fields. 

Speakers have included, among others, Conny Aerts, Peter Galison, Asimina Arvanitaki, Murray Gell-Mann, John Grunsfeld, Stephen Hawking, Robert Kirshner, Nathan Lewis, and M. Cristina Marchetti. Talks have ranged from how stars ring, projects at the large hadron collider (LHC), how the brain works, challenges for global energy, the potential in the human genome, and black holes.

Friends of KITP receive priority seat reservations, and an informal reception follows each lecture.


KITP Public Lectures Archive

Event Informationsort ascending
Starquakes and Exoplanets in the Milky Way
Speaker: Conny Aerts
Date: 2015-09-18
Spacetime Warps and the Quantum: A Glimpse of the Future
Speaker: Kip S. Thorne
Date: 1999-02-24
Space-Time Versus the Quantum
Speaker: Joseph Polchinski
Date: 2014-12-04
Snowflakes, Seashells, and the Origins of Complexity in Nature
Speaker: James S. Langer
Date: 1996-05-15
Science and the Mind
Speaker: Roger Penrose
Date: 1999-05-12
Rhythms & Algorithms ~ Physics and Music
Speaker: Theo Geisel
Date: 2014-02-19
Realizing Feynman’s Dream of a Quantum Simulator
Speaker: Immanuel Bloch
Date: 2016-09-28
Quantum Theory of the Classical
Speaker: Wojciech Hubert Zurek
Date: 2019-05-29
Quantum Reality
Speaker: Sankar Das Sarma
Date: 2009-02-25
Putting Weirdness to Work: Quantum Information Science
Speaker: John Preskill
Date: 2006-05-03