Stony Brook University
7:30 pm
Earth and Space Sciences Building, ESS 001
Friday, October 9, 2026
C.N. Yang in the History of Physics (and Stony Brook)
Distinguished Professor George Sterman
Chen-Ning (Frank) Yang came to Stony Brook University in 1966, bringing with him a Nobel Prize and instant credibility for the then-new university. His historic research in theoretical physics, much of it carried out on Long Island, is foundational to our understanding of the visible universe. I'll try to give a sense of his towering contributions in the twentieth century, and what they have become in contemporary physics.
George Sterman received his bachelor's in physics from the University of Chicago, and doctorate from the University of Maryland in 1974. He joined the Institute for Theoretical Physics (now YITP) at Stony Brook in 1979, and has remained since then. He has served as the Director of the YITP since 2001 and was named Distinguished Professor in 2004. Over the years, his work at Stony Brook in quantum field theory played an influential role in the development of tools for the interpretation of data at high energy colliders, contributing to the confirmation of quantum chromodynamics as the theory of the strong interactions and facilitating the search for new laws of physics. His contributions were recognized by a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Physical Society Fellowship and J.J. Sakurai Prize in Theoretical Particle Physics (shared with Alfred H. Mueller), and in 2025 an honorary doctorate from ETH Zurich.
