内容提要： Isaac Newton (1642-1727), a natural philosopher and perhaps the greatest scientist of all time, had a tough childhood. He made all his great discoveries at age 23/24, right after he received his bachelor degree, and became chair professor at Cambridge University at 27. He was also a man with many “strange” behaviors, a true believer in God, and most likely a homosexual. While Newton was busy discovering the universal law of gravitation, he was also searching out hidden meanings in the Bible and pursuing the covert art of alchemy, what some people call pseudoscience today. Is he really a scientist? Is there any connection between creativity and sexuality? Is there any conflict between religious and scientific pursuits? Why did Newton wait 21 years to publish his great book Principia? And, did the apple credited to inspire Newton’s gravitational theory really fall on his head? In this talk, all these questions will be discussed and answered, by putting Newton’s case in the context of the bigger issues.  

　　报告人简介：Lui LAM (林磊), humanist and physicist,  professor at San Jose State University, California,  and guest professor at  (IOP), CAS. He got his MS at University of British Columbia;   He did his PhD thesis at Bell Labs with Philip Platzman, student of Nobelist Richard  Feynman.  From 1978-1983 he worked at IoP, CAS, Beijing where he published the first  PRL paper ever from mainland China (1979); invented Bowlics (1982), one of three existing types of liquid crystals ; and pioneered the study of propagating solitons in liquid crystals (PRL, 1982). He further invented Active Walks (1992), a new paradigm in complex systems; and two new disciplines: Histophysics  (2002) and Scimat (Science Matters, 2007/2008). He has published 15 books and over 180 scientific papers;  He is the founder of the International  Liquid Crystal Society (1990); His current research is in scimat, complex systems, and philosophy; 

　　Website: www.sjsu.edu/people/lui.lam/scimat. 

　　Email: lui2002lam@yahoo.com.