Gruber prize at Cambridge

There was some excitement at the COSMO 2013 conference at Cambridge yesterday evening, with the presentation of this year’s Gruber prize for cosmology. The prize went to Viatcheslav Mukhanov and Alexei Starobinsky, two Russian theoreticians who made legendary contributions to our understanding of the formation of structure in the early universe.  After a very nice ceremony, we got a superb seminar from each; Starobinksy gave a talk on ‘Quantum Beginning of the Universe’, while Muhkanov gave a moving and often hilarious account of a scientist’s life in the old Soviet Union .

Mukhanov (L) and Starobinsky (R) accepting the Gruber prize

During the day, we had many seminars on the cosmic microwave background, notably by George Efstathiou and Jo Dunkley, and a talk by John Kovac on attempts to detect B-mode polarization in the CMB from ground-based telescopes. You can see the conference programme here. The Gruber ceremony was followed by a reception, so I didn’t get home until 10 pm.  All in all, a pretty full day.

Today, the talks are on large scale structure in the universe and quite a bit more technical (at least for your humble correspondent). On the other hand, there is quite a frisson in the room as Stephen Hawking has just arrived to catch Andreas Ringwald’s talk on axions. This evening, Professor Hawking and Brian Cox will each give a public talk as part of the conference, I’m looking forward to it.

Update

We had three public lectures this evening. Andrew Liddle on cosmology and the Planck results, Brian Cox on the LHC and the Higgs boson, and Stephen Hawking on space and time or  ‘Fire in the Equations’. Andrew gave his usual tour de force (see here for a review of his recent Dublin lecture), Brian gave a surprisingly mathematical lecture on the standard Model of particle physics, and Stephen stole the show with a truly inspirational lecture on space, time, the meaning of it all and why scientists need to stay curious. Just the thing for a jaded conference delegate with a paper to finish before he goes home!

Brian Cox in action

Stephen Hawking musing on the meaning of the universe