Monthly Meeting August – The Whole Story — 13.8 Billion Years of Expansion and 100 Years of Science in Under an Hour with Professor Richard Easther.

with Professor Richard Easther.

Cosmology is the scientific study of the origin and evolution of the universe. Modern cosmology began in the 1920s with the discovery of mathematical descriptions of the expanding universe along with the first observational evidence that our universe is – in fact – expanding. So, while the universe seems to be 13.8 billion years old, human beings saw the first hints that it began with Big Bang itself almost 100 years ago. I will give a quick tour of where our understanding of cosmology is today and where it might be heading as the field approaches the end of its first Century. The talk will not be technical.

Professor Easther grew up in New Zealand, and was educated at the University of Canterbury. After graduating with his PhD 1994, he held post-doctoral fellowships at Waseda University in Japan and at Brown and Columbia Universities in the United States.

He was a professor at Yale University from 2004 until the end of 2011, when he returned to New Zealand. He is now professor and Head of the Department of Physics here at the University of Auckland.