Maurer Distinguished Lecturer to Speak on Chaos and Pattern Formation

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Harry Swinney

Harry Swinney, who holds the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair in Physics at the University of Texas, has been selected as the University of Arkansas's 2017 Robert D. Maurer Distinguished Lecturer.

Swinney will present "Emergence of Spatial Patterns and Chaos in Nonequilibrium Systems" from 7:30 to 9 p.m. Thursday, April 6 in Giffels Auditorium. His talk is free and open to the public.

"The question of how spatiotemporal patterns emerge in systems driven away from thermodynamic equilibrium arose from studies in several fluid flow geometries, and a chemical model proposed by Turing, more than a half century ago," Swinney said. "In recent decades, experiments and numerical simulations have revealed a variety of spatiotemporal patterns and chaotic dynamics in diverse systems, as will be described in this talk. The talk will conclude with some challenging open questions, as illustrated by a simple model related to climate."

Swinney has studied instabilities, chaos and pattern formation in a variety of fluid, chemical, solid, granular and biological systems. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

"We are very excited about hosting Dr. Swinney for this year's Maurer Lecture," said Julio Gea-Banacloche, professor and chair of the Department of Physics in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. "He is a first-rate scientist who has made substantial contributions to the study of dynamical instabilities, chaos and pattern formation, and I believe he is an engaging and dynamic speaker as well."

About Harry Swinney: Swinney received his B.S. in physics from Rhodes College and his doctorate in physics from Johns Hopkins University, and held faculty appointments at New York University and City College of New York before moving to the University of Texas at Austin in 1978, where he currently holds the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair.

His awards include the American Physical Society Fluid Dynamics Prize, the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics Jurgen Moser Lecture Prize, the Lewis Fry Richardson Medal of the European Geophysical Union, and the Boltzmann Medal of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics.

More information about Swinney's research can be found on his website at the Center for Nonlinear Dynamics of the University of Texas at Austin.

About the Maurer Distinguished Lecture Series: The Maurer Distinguished Lecture Series began in 1995 in honor of Robert D. Maurer, distinguished alumnus of the Department of Physics.  A native of Arkadelphia, Maurer received a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Arkansas in 1980.