Biologist, students use hummingbirds, flowers to unwrap evolution’s mysteries

Submitted on Thursday, 3/6/2014, at 11:07 AM

By Peter Rooney

In a jungle-like enclosure the size of a basketball court on one of the Caribbean’s most ecologically diverse islands, Ethan Temeles, Amherst College's Thomas B. Walton Jr. Memorial Professor of Biology, has devised an audacious experiment he hopes will help answer one of evolution’s most vexing questions once and for all.

Amherst College Physicists Create Synthetic Magnetic Particle

January 29, 2014

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Physics Professor David Hall and Postdoctoral Associate Michael Ray.
Editor's note: High-resolution photos are available upon request.

AMHERST, Mass.—Nearly 85 years after pioneering theoretical physicist Paul Dirac predicted the possibility of their existence, an international collaboration led by Amherst College Physics Professor David S. Hall ’91 and Aalto University (Finland) Academy Research Fellow Mikko Möttönen has created, identified and photographed synthetic magnetic monopoles in Hall’s laboratory on the Amherst campus.

Five Faculty Members Awarded Tenure

Submitted on Thursday, 5/19/2016, at 12:42 PM

February 12, 2014

At its regular winter meeting in January, the Amherst College Board of Trustees voted to approve the recommendations of President Martin and the Committee of Six that each of these five faculty members be awarded tenure at the rank of associate professor, beginning July 1.

Professor Catherine Ciepiela Publishes Anthology of Contemporary Russian Women Poets

Submitted on Thursday, 6/20/2019, at 2:45 PM

when trees write                                                                                    если деревья пишут,
it’s to the white flowers                                                                         то белым цветам,
that walked the garden                                                                          что ходили по саду. 

when birds do                                                                                        если птицы,
it’s of what can’t be sung                                                                      о том, чего спеть нельзя.

lumps do not speak,                                                                              комья не говорят,
in flowerpots                                                                                          по цветочным горшкам
they have buried silence.                                                                       зарыли молчание.

 —Anna Glazova                                                                                   —Анна Глазова

 

Odes to Spoons and Stalin: Stavans Returns to Neruda

Submitted on Tuesday, 2/18/2014, at 3:30 PM

by Bill Sweet

This year Chile marked the 40th anniversary of the death of poet-statesman-Nobel Prizewinner Pablo Neruda with celebrations of his work and the exhumation of his body.

Just in time for the former —and having nothing to do with the latter, he assures us— Ilan Stavans, Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture, is now celebrating the publication of a new volume of Neruda translations, All the Odes.

Writer, Activist, Amherst College Lecturer Tillie Olsen to Be Celebrated at Amherst Books Oct. 23

Submitted on Tuesday, 8/4/2015, at 4:17 PM

AMHERST, Mass.—On Wednesday, Oct. 23, at 7 p.m. at Amherst Books (8 Main St.), family members will read from and discuss Tell Me a Riddle, Requa I, and Other Works(University of Nebraska Press), a new edition of collected writings by the late author, activist and educator Tillie Olsen (1912–2007).

The event is free and open to the public, with sponsorship from Amherst Books and from the Department of English and Creative Writing Center at Amherst College, where Olsen was a pioneering faculty member.

Black German culture, history highlighted at Amherst-sponsored conference

Submitted on Tuesday, 2/18/2014, at 3:31 PM

By Peter Rooney

As more African-Americans are realizing they have German roots, and as Germans expand the notion of what it means to be German, a new academic discipline dedicated to examining the Black German experience recently had its third International Conference at Amherst College.

Professor David Hanneke Wins NSF CAREER Grant for Physics Research with Amherst College Students

Submitted on Monday, 7/1/2013, at 4:58 PM

By Katherine Duke ’05

The research that takes place in David Hanneke’s lab in Merrill Science Center involves a lot of cool stuff: lasers, crystals, electromagnetic traps, the fundamental constants of the universe and Amherst College students. Now Hanneke, an assistant professor of physics, has a five-year, $600,000 CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support his team’s ongoing investigations into the properties of charged particles.  

A Meeting of the Mindful to introduce compassion, kindness in schools worldwide

Submitted on Tuesday, 5/28/2013, at 4:46 PM

May 28, 2013 • By Peter Rooney

AMHERST, Mass. – The Amherst College campus is forging ever stronger links with the burgeoning mindfulness movement, in academia and beyond.

The most recent example is an initiative—funded with a $1 million grant from the Dalai Lama and spearheaded by a renowned physicist from Amherst College and a group of 30 leading minds in fields such as education, neuroscience and childhood development—to integrate the core principles of compassion and kindness into a secular ethics curriculum that can be taught worldwide, to people of all ages.

Amherst Prof Devises First Head-to-Head Speed Test with Conventional Computing, and the Quantum Computer Wins

May 7, 2013 • By Peter Rooney

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Catherine McGeoch

AMHERST, Mass.A computer science professor at Amherst College who recently devised and conducted experiments to test the speed of a quantum computing system against conventional computing methods will soon be presenting a paper with her verdict: quantum computing is, “in some cases, really, really fast.”

Physicist’s Work Sheds New Light on Possible “Fifth Force of Nature”

February 21, 2013 • Article by Caroline Hanna

This picture depicts the long-range spin-spin interaction (blue wavy lines) in which the spin-sensitive detector on Earth’s surface interacts with geoelectrons (red dots) deep in Earth’s mantle. The arrows on the geoelectrons indicate their spin orientations, opposite that of Earth’s magnetic field lines (white arcs). Illustration: Marc Airhart (University of Texas at Austin) and Steve Jacobsen (Northwestern University).

In a breakthrough for the field of particle physics, Larry Hunter, the Stone Professor of Natural Sciences (Physics), and colleagues at Amherst and The University of Texas at Austin have established new limits on what scientists call “long-range spin-spin interactions” between atomic particles. These interactions have been proposed by theoretical physicists but have not yet been seen. Their observation would constitute the discovery of a “fifth force of nature” (in addition to the four known fundamental forces: gravity, weak, strong and electromagnetic) and would suggest the existence of new particles, beyond those presently described by the Standard Model of particle physics.