THE PARTICIPANTS

The Aspen Center for Physics welcomes applications from any physicist with a serious program of research that can be carried out at the Center. During the Center's 15-week summer session, over 400 physicists selected from over 700 applicants and representing about 100 different institutions participate, with approximately 85 participants at any one time. The winter conferences are attended by nearly 200 participants in the three one-week sessions.

The mix in the summer includes specialists from the three major areas of forefront theoretical physics research: astrophysics, elementary particle physics, and condensed matter physics. It also includes researchers in areas such as atomic physics, nuclear physics, biophysics and complex systems. Frequently, experimental physicists also find it profitable to come to the Center for reflection, writing and consultation with their theoretical colleagues.

Physicists who come to Aspen in the summer often bring their families. Evening picnics at the Center have become a tradition, encouraging ties that are personal as well as professional. In a few cases, children who came to the Center with their parents are now young physicists attending summer sessions in their own right.

The international participants come from universities, private research laboratories and government laboratories and they include young scientists as well as those who are better established. While participants must provide their own salaries, the Center does offer a "dislocation" allowance based upon need to help defray the cost of housing. All of the housing is provided through the Center.

The Physics Center makes a special effort to bring distinguished physicists from abroad by paying part of the cost of their foreign travel. The Center has also hosted several joint U.S./U.S.S.R. cooperative programs.

Many distinguished scientists have done work at the Aspen Center for Physics. Several of them have been awarded the Nobel Prize for their work in physics including Philip Anderson, Hans Bethe, James Cronin, Richard P. Feynman, William Fowler, Murray Gell-Mann, Leon Lederman, Steven Weinberg and Kenneth Wilson.

The Aspen Center for Physics is an institution run for scientists and by scientists. The time and the energy that physicists put into the Center for Physics, as officers, trustees and members of the corporation, make it possible to administer the Center with a minimum of paid staff.

I have often heard it said that there is no such thing as a free lunch. It now appears possible that the universe itself is a free lunch.

- Alan Guth, 1982

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