The Ernest Kempton Adams (EKA) Lectures at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manha ...

is a lecture series on physics that originally took place from 1905 to 1913. According to physicist Andrew Millis, the series "marked the beginning of America’s engagement with modern physics," and was the first and only occasion on which several leading European physicists visited or lectured in America. It was originally funded by

Edward Dean Adams Edward Dean Adams (April 9, 1846 – May 20, 1931) was an American businessman, banker, power broker and numismatist. He was the president of Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power and Manufacturing Company which built the first hydroelectric power plan ...

with a $50,000 endowment in memory of his son, Ernest Kempton Adams, who was an 1897 alumnus of Columbia’s School of Mines. The lecture series was founded by Professor

George B. Pegram George Braxton Pegram (October 24, 1876 – August 12, 1958) was an American physicist who played a key role in the technical administration of the Manhattan Project. He graduated from Trinity College (now Duke University) in 1895, and taught hi ...

. The series was revived in 2022 with a lecture by Michael Berry.

List of lectures

1905–06:

Vilhelm Bjerknes Vilhelm Friman Koren Bjerknes ( , ; 14 March 1862 – 9 April 1951) was a Norwegian physicist and meteorologist who did much to found the modern practice of weather forecasting. He formulated the primitive equations that are still in use in n ...

, "Fields of Force" 1906–07:

Hendrik Lorentz Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (; 18 July 1853 – 4 February 1928) was a Dutch physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect. He also derived the Lorent ...

, "The Theory of Electrons and its Application to the Phenomena of Light and Radiant Heat" 1909:

Max Planck Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (, ; 23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Planck made many substantial contributions to theoretical ...

, "Eight Lectures on Theoretical Physics" 1909–10:

Carl Runge Carl David Tolmé Runge (; 30 August 1856 – 3 January 1927) was a German mathematician, physicist, and spectroscopist. He was co-developer and co-eponym of the Runge–Kutta method (German pronunciation: ), in the field of what is today known ...

, "Graphical Methods" 1911:

Jacques Hadamard Jacques Salomon Hadamard (; 8 December 1865 – 17 October 1963) was a French mathematician who made major contributions in number theory, complex analysis, differential geometry and partial differential equations. Biography The son of a tea ...

, "Four Lectures on Mathematics" 1913:

Robert W. Wood Robert Williams Wood (May 2, 1868 – August 11, 1955) was an American physicist and inventor who made pivotal contributions to the field of optics. He pioneered infrared and ultraviolet photography. Wood's patents and theoretical work inform m ...

, "Researches in Physical Optics, Part I" 1913:

Wilhelm Wien Wilhelm Carl Werner Otto Fritz Franz Wien (; 13 January 1864 – 30 August 1928) was a German physicist who, in 1893, used theories about heat and electromagnetism to deduce Wien's displacement law, which calculates the emission of a blackbody ...

, "Neuere Probleme der theoretischen Physik" 2022: Michael Berry, "Four Geometric Optical Illusions"

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Adams Lectures, Ernest Kempton Lecture series at Columbia University Recurring events established in 1905 1905 establishments in New York City Physics education 1913 disestablishments in New York (state) Physics events

List of lectures

See also

References