Grove City College’s Albert A. Hopeman Jr. Memorial Lecture in Faith, Science and Technology will feature physicist Stephen Barr discussing “Science and Religion: The Myth of Conflict.”
The lecture at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 2 in Sticht Lecture Hall of the Staley Hall of Arts and Letters on campus is free and open to the public.
Barr is professor emeritus in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Delaware and the founding president of the Society of Catholic Scientists. He has written extensively and lectured widely on the relation between science and religion. Many of his articles and reviews have appeared in First Things and other national publications, including National Review, Public Discourse, and The Wall Street Journal.
He is the author of “Modern Physics and Ancient Faith,” “A Student’s Guide to Natural Science,” “Science and Religion: The Myth of Conflict,” and “The Believing Scientist: Essays on Science and Religion.”
Barr’s physics research centers on “grand unified theories” and the cosmology of the early universe. He received his Ph.D. in theoretical particle physics in 1978 from Princeton University and was a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Washington, and Brookhaven National Laboratory before joining the faculty of the University of Delaware in 1987. He has written 170 research papers and was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2011.
He received the Benemerenti Medal from Pope Benedict XVI and was elected to the Academy of Catholic Theology in 2010.
The Albert A. Hopeman Jr. Memorial Lecture is presented by the Grove City College Alumni Association in honor of Hopeman, an accomplished engineer, renowned industrialist, and generous benefactor of the College who served as President of the Grove City College Board of Trustees from 1972 to 1998 after joining the Board in 1953. In 1997, the Board of Trustees named the College’s school of engineering and sciences after him and the Alumni Association conferred honorary alumnus status to Hopeman.