Public Events: Arts and Lecture Series

Hollywood is well known for exercising poetic license in its depiction of many aspects of the natural world.  Surprisingly such films provide a remarkably fertile environment for the exploration of many aspects of science and scientific reasoning. By examining selected scenes from a few such films we can experience the kind of quantitative analysis employed by scientists in their approach to understanding the world around us.  Join Dr. Cohen for an analytical look at the movies on Friday, August 11 when he explores science in films.

Andrew Cohen is Professor of Physics at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and Boston University. He is currently the Director of the HKUST Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study and the Lam Woo Foundation Chair Professor of Physics at HKUST. Prof. Cohen holds degrees in music and physics from Stanford University and received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Harvard University. A former Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows, a fellow of the American Physical Society, and Chairman of the Board of the Aspen Center for Physics, Prof. Cohen conducts research on the physics of elementary particles. At Boston University he created the course “Cinema Physica” that introduces non-science concentrators to the principles of quantitative scientific reasoning through the analysis of popular films.