Western’s Board of Governors named Hanny Hassan as the university governing body’s next Chair at its regular meeting Thursday. His term begins Jan. 1. Named to the Board by the Alumni Association in 2009, Hassan is President of Alef Consulting. He received a BESc from...
Month: November 2015
Banting, Possmayer named among game-changes
Frederick Banting and Fred Possmayer, PhD’65, have been named in the top-five favourite game-changing Ontario research discoveries, as voted on by the public. In 1921, Frederick Banting, who taught at Western at the time, came up with the idea of extracting insulin...
Teeter awarded Polanyi Prize
Matthew Teeter, a Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry professor and Lawson Health Research Institute scientist, won the 2015 John Charles Polanyi Prize. The $20,000 award recognizes the excellence of Teeter’s research in joint replacement. It was presented at...
Dice Capades: Einstein and quantum mechanics
Einstein has become such a cultural touchstone that the internet is full of dubiously sourced quotations attributed to him. One of the most famous usually appears as “I refuse to believe that God plays dice with the universe” – or more simply “God doesn’t play dice.”...
Celebrating Einstein
A popular picture of scientific revolutions, such as Einstein’s overthrow of Newtonian physics, paints them as involving something like a gestalt shift; they involve a sudden reorientation of the perspective through which we see the world. The perspective, through...
Relics of a life: Einstein museum exhibit brings an interactive twist
In December 2014, Stathis Psillos, former Rotman Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Science at Western, suggested the idea of Einstein @ Rotman, a series of events culminating with a museum exhibit with manuscripts related to Einstein’s theory of general...
Games God plays: Einstein, God, dice and the interpretation of quantum mechanics
To most of us, Albert Einstein is known as one of the most original thinkers of the 20th century - perhaps even of all time. He introduced new ways of thinking about space and time in the Special and General Theories of Relativity, and these were not even the...
‘Hole’ lotta force: Punching holes in the theory of General Relativity
Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity was a new way of describing gravity, and it had some unexpected consequences. One of these regarded the description of an object collapsing under its own gravitational pull. If the object is sufficiently dense, no force is...
Empty out the drawer: Following Einstein’s path to General Relativity
This month, we celebrate the centenary of Einstein’s discovery of a new theory of gravity – general relativity. Einstein’s achievement required perseverance and enormous creativity, as he struggled over a rough and winding road for eight years to formulate the theory....
Appreciating Einstein’s bridge between philosophy and science a century after Relativity
Albert Einstein was more than one of the 20th century’s greatest scientists; he was one of its greatest minds. That’s a distinction not lost on members of the Western’s Rotman Institute of Philosophy. “Einstein fills so many roles for us today,” said Philosophy...
Winders: Newsmaker tradition helps mark the years
I am certain Igor Sergeyevich Gouzenko had no idea what he started. In 1945, Gouzenko, a cipher clerk at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa, sparked an international incident when he defected to Canada. The move would have gone unnoticed by history, or at best relegated to...
Solga: Preparing to raise the curtain on Destination Theatre
One thing I’ll say about my life as an academic: It involves a lot of travel, and plenty of that travel is a real pleasure. Two weeks ago, I was in London, England, at the school where I used to work, Queen Mary University of London. I was there with my colleague from...
Town Hall to inform degree outcomes conversation
The discussion won’t revolve around graduates’ careers or salaries, and it won’t directly compare their learning experience at Western to experiences at another university. But, if you attend tomorrow’s Town Hall on Western Degree Outcomes, come prepared to consider...
Banting, Possmayer named among game-changes
Frederick Banting and Fred Possmayer, PhD’65, have been named in the top-five favourite game-changing Ontario research discoveries, as voted on by the public. In 1921, Frederick Banting, who taught at Western at the time, came up with the idea of extracting insulin...
Teeter awarded Polanyi Prize
Matthew Teeter, a Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry professor and Lawson Health Research Institute scientist, won the 2015 John Charles Polanyi Prize. The $20,000 award recognizes the excellence of Teeter’s research in joint replacement. It was presented at...
Dice Capades: Einstein and quantum mechanics
Einstein has become such a cultural touchstone that the internet is full of dubiously sourced quotations attributed to him. One of the most famous usually appears as “I refuse to believe that God plays dice with the universe” – or more simply “God doesn’t play dice.”...
Celebrating Einstein
A popular picture of scientific revolutions, such as Einstein’s overthrow of Newtonian physics, paints them as involving something like a gestalt shift; they involve a sudden reorientation of the perspective through which we see the world. The perspective, through...
Relics of a life: Einstein museum exhibit brings an interactive twist
In December 2014, Stathis Psillos, former Rotman Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Science at Western, suggested the idea of Einstein @ Rotman, a series of events culminating with a museum exhibit with manuscripts related to Einstein’s theory of general...
Games God plays: Einstein, God, dice and the interpretation of quantum mechanics
To most of us, Albert Einstein is known as one of the most original thinkers of the 20th century - perhaps even of all time. He introduced new ways of thinking about space and time in the Special and General Theories of Relativity, and these were not even the...
‘Hole’ lotta force: Punching holes in the theory of General Relativity
Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity was a new way of describing gravity, and it had some unexpected consequences. One of these regarded the description of an object collapsing under its own gravitational pull. If the object is sufficiently dense, no force is...
Empty out the drawer: Following Einstein’s path to General Relativity
This month, we celebrate the centenary of Einstein’s discovery of a new theory of gravity – general relativity. Einstein’s achievement required perseverance and enormous creativity, as he struggled over a rough and winding road for eight years to formulate the theory....
Appreciating Einstein’s bridge between philosophy and science a century after Relativity
Albert Einstein was more than one of the 20th century’s greatest scientists; he was one of its greatest minds. That’s a distinction not lost on members of the Western’s Rotman Institute of Philosophy. “Einstein fills so many roles for us today,” said Philosophy...
Winders: Newsmaker tradition helps mark the years
I am certain Igor Sergeyevich Gouzenko had no idea what he started. In 1945, Gouzenko, a cipher clerk at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa, sparked an international incident when he defected to Canada. The move would have gone unnoticed by history, or at best relegated to...
Solga: Preparing to raise the curtain on Destination Theatre
One thing I’ll say about my life as an academic: It involves a lot of travel, and plenty of that travel is a real pleasure. Two weeks ago, I was in London, England, at the school where I used to work, Queen Mary University of London. I was there with my colleague from...
Town Hall to inform degree outcomes conversation
The discussion won’t revolve around graduates’ careers or salaries, and it won’t directly compare their learning experience at Western to experiences at another university. But, if you attend tomorrow’s Town Hall on Western Degree Outcomes, come prepared to consider...