Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI, Perimeter, PITP) is an independent research centre in foundational

theoretical physics Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain, and predict List of natural phenomena, natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental p ...

located in Waterloo,

Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...

, Canada. It was founded in 1999. The institute's founding and major benefactor is Canadian entrepreneur and philanthropist Mike Lazaridis. The original building, designed by Saucier + Perrotte, opened in 2004 and was awarded a Governor General's Medal for Architecture in 2006. The Stephen Hawking Centre, designed by Teeple Architects, was opened in 2011 and was LEED Silver certified in 2015. In addition to research, Perimeter also provides scientific training and educational outreach activities to the general public. This is done in part through Perimeter's Educational Outreach team.

History

In 1999, Howard Burton—who had a PhD in theoretical physics from the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a Public university, public research university located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to uptown Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also op ...

—emailed Mike Lazaridis along with 20 CEOs in an attempt to leave his

Wall Street Wall Street is a street in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs eight city blocks between Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway in the west and South Street (Manhattan), South Str ...

job. Lazaridis then pitched the idea of the Perimeter Institute to Burton as he wanted to use his

BlackBerry BlackBerry is a discontinued brand of handheld devices and related mobile services, originally developed and maintained by the Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM, later known as BlackBerry Limited) until 2016. The first BlackBerry device ...

wealth for a philanthropic endeavour. Lazaridis' initial donation of $100 million was announced on October 23, 2000, believed to be the biggest private donation in Canadian history to that point. Jim Balsille and Doug Fregin each donated $10 million. The city of Waterloo offered four sites of land for free; Lazaridis chose the former site of the Waterloo Memorial Arena (near Uptown Waterloo). Research operations began in 2001, in a temporary site in a nearby post office. Burton became the Institute's founding director. The permanent building's construction finished in 2004. The Ontario budget, announced in March 2006, included a commitment to provide $50 million in funding to PI from the Ministry of Research and Innovation. In May 2008, Dr. Neil Turok, a cosmologist, was appointed as Perimeter Institute's second director replacing Howard Burton. Lazaridis donated a subsequent $50 million on June 4, 2008. In November 2008, it was announced that physicist

Stephen Hawking Stephen William Hawking (8January 194214March 2018) was an English theoretical physics, theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who was director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. Between ...

would take the position of Distinguished Visiting Research Chair, a visiting position, at the institute. Designed by Teeple Architects, a new expansion, the

Centre at Perimeter Institute, was completed in September 2011. The centre's grand opening was in September 2011 and included a video greeting from Hawking, who rarely traveled due to disability. This was the first-ever Gold Seal-managed project in Ontario, it attained LEED Silver certification in 2015. On February 28, 2019, Dr. Robert Myers was appointed as the third director of the Perimeter Institute. On Nov 4, 2024, Marcela Carena was announced as the fourth director.

Design

The Institute was designed by Montréal-based architectural firm Saucier + Perrotte. A concrete stairwell in the building's atrium was designed by Blackwell Engineers. The Institute's front aluminum wall is black with small windows to represent a

blackboard A blackboard or a chalkboard is a reusable writing surface on which text or drawings are made with sticks of calcium sulphate or calcium carbonate, better known as chalk. Blackboards were originally made of smooth, thin sheets of black or da ...

. There are wooden fireplaces and blackboards throughout the building. Writing for ''

The Globe and Mail ''The Globe and Mail'' is a Newspapers in Canada, Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in Western Canada, western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of more than 6 million in 2024, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on week ...

'', architecture critic Lisa Rochon praised the Institute's "seamless connections" between the building's interior and exterior and said the building is about "the flow of light and the directions we can take". Rochon described the building as

modernism Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

, and cited Tadao Ando as an influence.

Research

Perimeter's research encompasses nine fields: *

Cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe, the cosmos. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', with the meaning of "a speaking of the wo ...

Mathematical physics Mathematical physics is the development of mathematics, mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. The ''Journal of Mathematical Physics'' defines the field as "the application of mathematics to problems in physics and the de ...

Particle Physics Particle physics or high-energy physics is the study of Elementary particle, fundamental particles and fundamental interaction, forces that constitute matter and radiation. The field also studies combinations of elementary particles up to the s ...

* Quantum fields and strings *

Quantum foundations Quantum foundations is a discipline of science that seeks to understand the most counter-intuitive aspects of quantum theory, reformulate it and even propose new generalizations thereof. Contrary to other physical theories, such as general relat ...

Quantum gravity Quantum gravity (QG) is a field of theoretical physics that seeks to describe gravity according to the principles of quantum mechanics. It deals with environments in which neither gravitational nor quantum effects can be ignored, such as in the v ...

Quantum information Quantum information is the information of the state of a quantum system. It is the basic entity of study in quantum information theory, and can be manipulated using quantum information processing techniques. Quantum information refers to both t ...

* Quantum matter * Strong gravity

Programs

Perimeter Institute Recorded Seminar Archive (PIRSA)

An extensive, up-to-date archive of the institute's varied research activities is readily available to the public via the internet. The Perimeter Institute Recorded Seminar Archive (PIRSA), is a permanent, free, searchable, and citable archive of recorded seminars, conferences, workshops and outreach events. Seminars with video and timed presentation materials can be accessed on-demand in Windows and Flash formats together with MP3 audio files and PDFs of the supporting materials. The PIRSA project is enlarged by the creation of SciVideos (See below).

SciVideos

After more than 13,000 talks uploaded to PIRSA, Perimeter Institute created in 2020 a new public video archive called SciVideos with the support of the Simons Foundations. It is a meta-repository search tool of scientific talks beyond what is produced at PI and aims to "revolutionize the world of scholarly communication in the way that the

arXiv arXiv (pronounced as "archive"—the X represents the Chi (letter), Greek letter chi ⟨χ⟩) is an open-access repository of electronic preprints and postprints (known as e-prints) approved for posting after moderation, but not Scholarly pee ...

has done for print scientific papers". Apart from PIRSA's existing content, SciVideos indexes videos from other institutions, such as

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Gene ...

, Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, ICTP and ICTP-SAIFR. As a meta-repository, SciVideos only stores metadata and links related to the videos, which are stored in other databases.

Educational outreach

Perimeter's educational outreach team's activities include a monthly public lecture series, a two-week summer camp for the world's top science students, a series of in-class resources, week-long professional development workshops for science teachers, cultural activities with local and international artists, an online archive of educational resources, an extensive network of science teachers to share content across Canada, and many other special events and science festivals contributing to physics outreach. Perimeter Institute operates an international outreach program. The annual EinsteinPlus summer school for high school physics teachers is held for one week each summer. The International Summer School for Young Physicists (ISSYP) is a physics camp for high school students. It brings approximately 20 Canadian students and 20 International students aged 16 – 18 to Perimeter for two weeks each year.

Public lectures series

Perimeter Institute has welcomed a number of very prominent scientists to deliver lectures on a wide variety of subjects. Lecturers have included:

Freeman Dyson Freeman John Dyson (15 December 1923 – 28 February 2020) was a British-American theoretical physics, theoretical physicist and mathematician known for his works in quantum field theory, astrophysics, random matrix, random matrices, math ...

, Gerard ‘t Hooft,

Jay Ingram Jay Ingram Order of Canada, CM (born March 20, 1945) is a Canadian author, broadcaster and science communicator. He was host of the television show ''Daily Planet (TV series), Daily Planet'' (originally titled ''@discovery.ca''), which aired on ...

Seth Lloyd Seth Lloyd (born August 2, 1960) is a professor of mechanical engineering and physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research area is the interplay of information with complex systems, especially quantum systems. He has perfor ...

, Jay Melosh, Sir Roger Penrose,

Michael Peskin Michael Edward Peskin (born October 27, 1951, Philadelphia) is an American theoretical physicist. He is currently a professor in the SLAC Theory Group, theory group at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Peskin has been recognized for his ...

Leonard Susskind Leonard Susskind (; born June 16, 1940)his 60th birth anniversary was celebrated with a special symposium at Stanford University.in Geoffrey West's introduction, he gives Suskind's current age as 74 and says his birthday was recent. is an Americ ...

Frank Wilczek Frank Anthony Wilczek ( or ; born May 15, 1951) is an American theoretical physicist, mathematician and Nobel laureate. He is the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Founding Director ...

and Anton Zeilinger.

BrainSTEM: Your Future is Now

This festival connected technological innovations to the scientific breakthroughs that make them possible. The festival, held September 30 to October 6, 2013, featured science-centre styled exhibits, special presentations, public lectures, Science in the Club events and insider-tours of the Perimeter Institute. Webcast Public Lectures featured James Grime, Ray Laflamme and

Lucy Hawking Catherine Lucy Hawking (born 2 November 1970) is an English journalist, novelist, educator, and philanthropist. She is the daughter of the Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking and writer Jane Hawking, Jane Wilde Hawking. S ...

Quantum to Cosmos: Ideas for the Future festival

Held in October, 2009, the Quantum to Cosmos: Ideas for the Future festival (Q2C Festival) was a

science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

outreach event held in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

. The festival included events and activities spanning: lectures, panel discussions, pub talks, cultural activities, a PI documentary premiere (The Quantum Tamers: Revealing Our Weird and Wired Future),

sci-fi Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

film festival, an art exhibit and the hugely popular Physica Phantastica exhibit centre, a space filled with demonstrations, hands-on activities, experiments and an immersive 3D tour of the

universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents. It comprises all of existence, any fundamental interaction, physical process and physical constant, and therefore all forms of matter and energy, and the structures they form, from s ...

narrated by

. The Q2C Festival attracted some 40,000 attendees (including over 6,000 in the secondary school program that brought students from

and

New York State New York, also called New York State, is a state in the northeastern United States. Bordered by New England to the east, Canada to the north, and Pennsylvania and New Jersey to the south, its territory extends into both the Atlantic Ocean and ...

and nearly one million viewers – and counting – through online streaming, video-on-demand services and special television broadcasts. Special editions of TVO’s “ The Agenda with Steve Paikin", filmed live in PI's Atrium in Waterloo attracted hundreds of thousands of viewers from across Canada with just five broadcasts.

Training

Joint masters-level program

In partnership with the

, PI conducts Perimeter Scholars International (PSI), a master's level course in theoretical physics. The 10-month course was inaugurated in August 2009, and admits around 30 scholars per year. Students admitted (on average 3% of all applicants) receive full scholarships and living expenses. The master's degree itself is issued by the

Doctoral studies

Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics also hosts PhD students wishing to pursue full-time graduate studies under the supervision of a PI faculty member. PhD students receive their doctoral degrees from a university partner, such as the University of Waterloo.

Courses

Perimeter Institute offers a number of planned courses each year, including cross-listed programs with universities and mini-courses given by PI faculty, associate faculty and visiting researchers. The courses are made available to all students enrolled in surrounding universities. The popular courses are attended by students from

University of Western Ontario The University of Western Ontario (UWO; branded as Western University) is a Public university, public research university in London, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on of land, surrounded by residential neighbourhoods and the Thame ...

McMaster University McMaster University (McMaster or Mac) is a public research university in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main McMaster campus is on of land near the residential neighbourhoods of Ainslie Wood, Ontario, Ainslie Wood and Westdale, Ontario, Westd ...

University of Guelph The University of Guelph (abbreviated U of G) is a comprehensive Public university, public research university in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. It was established in 1964 after the amalgamation of Ontario Agricultural College (1874), the MacDonald I ...

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

York University York University (), also known as YorkU or simply YU), is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's third-largest university, and it has approximately 53,500 students, 7,000 faculty and staff, ...

, and other centres.

References

External links

PIRSA
– Perimeter Institute Recorded Seminar Archive
Perimeter Scholars International (PSI)

Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
{{DEFAULTSORT:Perimeter Institute For Theoretical Physics Research institutes in Canada Higher education in Ontario Physics research institutes Buildings and structures in Waterloo, Ontario Organizations established in 1999 Theoretical physics institutes 1999 establishments in Ontario