Trottier Symposium attracts overflow crowds

The general public is intensely interested in the great scientific issues of the day, as we could see on January 25th, 2007, when McGill University attracted record numbers of attendees to the second annual Lorne Trottier Public Science Symposium, A Cosmic Coincidence: Why is the Unvierse Just Right for Life?

Paul Davies, George Efstathiou, David Gross and Leonard Susskind, four of the world's most renowned physicists, came to McGill to debate the controversial anthropic principle; the notion that the universe is somehow specifically tuned to support life as we know it. The symposium was moderated by Professor Victoria Kaspi, McGill's Lorne Trottier Chair in Astrophysics and Cosmology.

A line-up began forming in front of Room 132 in McGill's Stephen Leacock Building well over an hour before the event began. Leacock 132 is the University's single largest auditorium, but it reached its 600-seat maximum capacity within minutes, as did the pre-arranged overflow space in Leacock 232. Similarly, the simultaneous live webcast of the event proved to be so popular that our bandwidth capacity was challenged. A video archive of the seminar can now be viewed online at http://mediasite.campus.mcgill.ca/trottiersymposium07.html.

The overwhelming public interest in A Cosmic Coincidence underlies the great social need for this type of forum. Once again, McGill University, the Faculty of Science and the Department of Physics would like to thank Mr. Lorne M. Trottier and the Trottier Family Foundation for their vision and generosity, and more, for pioneering this groundbreaking approach to public science.

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Faculty of Science - Symposium Office
Dawson Hall, Room 409
853 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, QC H3A 2T6 Canada
Telephone: 514-398-2852 email: [email protected]
Series website: http://www.mcgill.ca/science/trottier-symposium/

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