It wasn’t your usual after-dinner talk at a charity event by Brian Greene, Columbia University professor, theoretical physicist, co-founder of the World Science Festival and guest star on TV’s The Big Bang Theory.
But the GPF Foundation is not an ordinary charity. Dedicated to saving lives, the Foundation develops educational programs that help young adults understand the risks associated with recreational drug use while creating clinical training tools for front-line medical providers that address a critical “blind spot” in the accurate diagnosis and effective treatment of those experiencing adverse effects of psychostimulant use.
About 150 supporters—and potentially hundreds more watching a live stream on YouTube—participated in the GPF Foundation’s “Evening of Discovery” where Greene talked about some of the giants of physics, including Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and a little-known Catholic priest from Belgium.
Greene’s strength is to use story-telling as a means to understanding the mysteries of the cosmos, whether it’s the presence of gravity in the vacuum of space, Einstein’s epic curiosity or the scientific work of a Jesuit priest after the end of World War I.
To understand the big qualities of the cosmos, Greene said, "The starting point is the universal law of gravity,” thanks to Newton. It was Einstein “who famously said that ‘only two things might be infinite—God and human stupidity.’ And he said he wasn’t sure about God.”
In 1927 Fr. George Lemaître used Einstein’s theory of relativity to develop his “Big Bang” theory of the origin of the universe. Specifically, the universe expanded from an initial point ("Primeval Atom”) and was continuing to expand.
In response, according to Green, Einstein demonstrated his good humor when he agreed that Lemaître’s math was correct, “but his physics is atrocious.”
Go to GPFFoundation.org to learn more about the GPF Foundation.
