As we pursue our new direction of direct service to innovative Science & Art creators and knowledge practitioners, the IIS continues remarkable participation (and participant observation) in scientific research. IIS has long had a role in basic physics inquiry.
The hallmarks of our quantum physics have been several groundbreaking REAL (as opposed to gedanken) experiments of foundational import and participation in early stages of quantum information and quantum interferometry. This year Herb Bernstein proposed another foundational experiment, a test of wave function as the description for a single particle — directly challenging Albert Einstein’s famous last best hope to critique Quantum Mechanics at its root. Herb is working with experimentalist Paul Kwiat and his group to perform the proposed experiment. Paul — who is now a named-Chair full professor at the University of Illinois — was our first postdoc way back in the eighties. IIS research has deep roots: long held associations with great quantum physicists of the first rank.
Last year, Herb’s colleague Anton Zeilinger shared the Nobel prize in physics with two others for research which actually began, many years ago, in work on the team Herb inherited from MIT that he led for over a decade. Remarkably this was the second time a researcher on our National Science Foundation (NSF-) funded collaboration won that Prize; Cliff Shull was our senior advisor when he won the 1994 Prize himself. It’s quite notable that an institute at a PUI — Primarily Undergraduate Institution — has been so well connected, and so honored.
The Anacapa Society, cofounded by Herb and IIS board member Don Spector, is a professional scientific organization supporting research in theoretical physics at PUIs. This is also an unusual configuration and one from which IIS has learned several lessons applicable to its initiative of direct service to early- and mid-career STEAMM creators.
