Spring 2007

Knight Professor Studies Time, Space Secrets

Jim Brau says his recent appointment by UO President Dave Frohnmayer as a Philip H. Knight Professor of Science provides deeply appreciated recognition of his value to the university. It also makes offers to join research groups elsewhere less tempting.

“To me, this appointment recognizes the great work being done by our team in particle physics right here at Oregon,” Brau says. “It really shows that the university cares about this exciting effort to understand the fundamental nature of the universe.”

The Knight professorship will also help Brau’s group stay competitive in the drive to bring home federal funding.
“Our funding agencies look for a partnership with the state institution,” said Brau, whose group pulls in
$1 million in federal grants annually. “They look for reciprocal investment from the host institution, and that’s how support like an endowed professorship really helps the entire research effort.”

Brau, who directs the UO Center for High Energy Physics, also leads national and international research involving scores of projects by hundreds of colleagues around the globe.

“Jim is clearly one of the biggest leaders on super small particles,” said Joe Stone, former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Stone noted that Brau is the only U.S. scientist among the three leaders of a worldwide community of physicists preparing experiments for what will be one of history’s biggest science projects, a twenty-mile-long particle accelerator called the International Linear Collider.

The collider’s twin particle accelerators will hurl some ten billion electrons and their antiparticles, positrons, toward each other at nearly the speed of light, fifteen thousand times per second.

The resulting smash-ups, Brau says, will generate other fundamental particles so far unseen by humankind. Such discoveries would yield “the missing puzzle pieces” needed to unlock the mysteries of space and time. Brau’s life work focuses on the invention of tools capable of detecting such particles, which appear for less than a millionth of a millionth of a second.

Brau also helps shape the national direction for research in his field as a member of both the federal High Energy Physics Advisory Panel and the National Research Council Board on Physics and Astronomy.

But as influential as he is among scientists and policymakers, one of Brau’s greatest strengths is his ability to communicate the joy of science to lay audiences. During the year-long 2005 centennial celebration marking Einstein’s “miracle year,” a presentation Brau created for general audiences proved so successful that Chicago’s Fermilab recommends it as a model for scientists planning public programs.

The sheer pleasure of pursuing knowledge as a way to better understand nature has motivated Brau as long as he can remember.

“Most of the universe remains a mystery despite the depth of our knowledge,” Brau says. “We are working toward a radically new understanding of what the universe is made of and how it works, and that’s how Big Science contributes to our quality of life—by pushing technology in every direction we can.”

The Knight professorships were created in 1996 with a $15 million gift from Penny and Phil Knight ’59.

—Melody Ward Leslie