Welcome to the SSP2009!
The 4th International Symposium on Symmetries in Subatomic Physics will be held on June 2-5, 2009 at Department of Physics, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. We would like to invite you to attend and contribute to the success of the meeting.
It is fair to say that symmetries, or possible breakings of symmetries, have always played pivotal roles in connection with major developments in subatomic physics, i.e., the physics of nuclei and elementary particles. Indeed, major breakthroughs had sprung from the discovery of parity violation, to CP or T symmetry and its violation, to gauge symmetry and its spontaneous breaking, and many others.
As stated concisely by C. N. Yang in his closing speech of the First International Symposium on Symmetries in Subatomic Physics, “If you look at the history of the 20th century physics, there is every indication that the symmetry concept has emerged as one of the most fundamental themes, which still occupies the central stage in today's theoretical physics” and “it is safe to say that for the next ten or twenty years many many theoretical physicists will continue to try to play variations on the theme of symmetry in order to arrive at the next breakthrough.”
The idea of organizing a symposium on symmetries in subatomic physics came out in our informal conversation to have an occasion to mark the seventieth birthday of Professor Ernest M. Henley, our dearest friend for quite some time. Upon consulting many friends of Ernest's in the academic circle (most of them eventually showed up at the meeting), it was felt strongly that the subject matter which is under discussion, namely “Symmetries in Subatomic Physics”, is an ideal topic for a new series of IUPAP-sponsored topical conferences - a suggestion which turned out to determine how the series of symposia was organized. And it means that, according to the IUPAP policy (which we had tried hard to carefully observe throughout our organization of the meetings), the Symposium itself is no longer officially connected in any way with a birthday celebration of a living physicist.
The first symposium was organized in 1994 at Taipei, the second in 1997 at Seattle, the third in 2000 at Adelaide, and the fourth until now. In fact, the fourth should have happened in 2003 but our German colleague, who was in charge of the event, had decided to go to Netherlands. Well, we have to pick up somewhere in some way and, after all, we believe that the conference topics are indeed very important.
We are very proud to have the same conference twice here in Taiwan. I suspect that it will rotate away – I won’t see it again in Taiwan.
We are looking forward to seeing you in Taipei.
W-Y. Pauchy Hwang
Chair of the International Advisory Committee.
Sponsors
Originally proposed by C12, International Union of Pure and applied Physics (IUPAP)
Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics (APCTP)
Association of Asia Pacific Physical Societies (AAPPS)
National Science Council, Taiwan (NSC)
Ministry of Education, Taiwan (MoE)
National Taiwan University, Taiwan (NTU)
LeCosPA Research Center, National Taiwan University, Taiwan (LeCosPA)
Center for Theoretical Sciences, National Taiwan University, Taiwan (CTS)