Cooper Lecture Series

About the Series

Professor Bernard R. Cooper received his B.S. in Physics from MIT in 1957 and his Ph. D. in Physics from the University of California – Berkeley in 1961 working with Charles Kittel. He joined the WVU Physics Department in 1974 as the Benedum Professor of Physics after working at Harvard and General Electric. He was an expert in the theory of magnetism, especially the magnetic properties of rare earth and actinide metals. He was a fellow of the American Physical Society. The Cooper Lecture series was dedicated in his honor at the time of his retirement in 2003. Professor Cooper passed away in 2013.

Previous Cooper Lectures

2004 David Landau, University of Georgia – “A New Approach to Monte Carlo Simulations in Statistical Physics”
2005 Hari Manoharan, Stanford University – “Manipulation of Matter at the Spatial Limit”
2006 Myriam Sarachik, City College of New York – “Molecular Nanomagnets”
2007 David Jiles, Cardiff University – “Non-linear Behavior in Magnetic Materials”
2008 David Newman, University of Alaska-Fairbank – “Plasmas as a Prototypical Complex System: Self-Organized Criticality as a Paradigm for Plasma Transport”
2009 Bill Dorland, University of Maryland-College Park – “Turbulence in 5 Dimensions”
2010 Alexander Demkov, University of Texas-Austin – “Emerging Pheomena in Functional Oxide Heterostructures”
2011 Henry van Driel, University of Toronto, Canada – “A New Spin on Light”
2012 John Mather, Goddard Space Flight Center – “James Webb Space Telescope: Science Opportunities and Mission Progress”
2013 John Raymond, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics – “Probing the Solar Corona with Comet Lovejoy”
2014 Wolfgang Kleemann, University Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany – “Novel States and Functions of Magnetic and Polar Solids at the Nanoscale”
2015 Roberto Merlin, University of Michigan – “From Negative Refraction and Superfocusing to Wireless Power Transfer: The Path of the Superlens”
2016 Zhong Lin Wang, Georgia Institute of Technology – “Nanogenerators for Self-powered Systems and Piezotronics for Smart Devices”
2017 Rainer Weiss, Massachusetts Institute of Technology on behalf of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration - “Beginning the Exploration of the Universe with Gravitational Waves”
2018 Dan Dessau, Dan, University of Colorado, Boulder – “Resistance is Futile-Electronic Pairing Interactions in Cuprate and Organic Superconductors”
2019 Wounijhang (Won) Park, University of Colorado, Boulder – “Nanophotonic Enhancement of Luminescence Upconversion - Principles and Biomedical Applications”
2020 Cancelled due to COVID-19
2021 Keith Bannister, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) – “Mysterious Bursts From Half-Way Across the Universe Help Astronomers Find Missing Matter”
2022 Kristin Persson, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory – "The Era of Materials Data Revolution"
2023 Bruce Dean, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center – "The James Webb Space Telescope: Its Commissioning and Technology"