The Cooper Lecture Series honors the legacy of Professor Bernard R. Cooper. Lectures are held annually during the spring semester.
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 Lecturers
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 Phenomena 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, 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”
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 "
2024 | Jim Burch, Southwest Research Institute – "With New Eyes: A Space Scientist 's Odyssey"