News & Events
Physics Professor Roman Kezerashvili Named 2003 Scholar on Campus
When Roman Kezerashvili was a seven-year-old boy in Georgia, part of the former Soviet Union, his father came up with a unique approach to getting him to drink his milk that sparked his lifelong love for physics.
His father filled the glass up to the brim with milk, placed a card over the top, and turned the glass upside down. The milk did not pour out because the atmospheric pressure supported the card. "It's magic fluid," his father told him. Kezerashvili was so surprised that he drank every drop and, just like that, a physicist was born.
Kezerashvili, now a professor of physics at New York City College of Technology (City Tech) and honored as the 2003 Scholar on Campus, recalls that incident with a great deal of affection. While his parents were not scientists -- his father was a historian and his mother, a kindergarten teacher -- both of his brothers, like he, became nuclear physicists.
"A propensity for physics seems to run in my family," Kezerashvili says. "Two of my cousins are also physicists, one focuses on low-temperature physics and the other, solid state physics, and one of my sons is also a physicist, in the medical area."
An internationally recognized physicist who earned two doctorates (in nuclear physics and theoretical physics), did research at Institute of Physics (Tbilisi) and taught at Tbilisi University before emigrating to the U.S. in 1995, Kezerashvili will speak on "Neutron Matter?! Is It a Matter? What's the Matter?" when he delivers the Scholar on Campus lecture, complete with entertaining experiments, on Monday, April 28, from 5 to 6:15 p.m. This free event will take place in the College's Atrium Amphitheater at 300 Jay Street in Downtown Brooklyn. His talk is being sponsored by the Office of the Provost's Professional Development Advisory Council. For more information, the public may call 718.260.5560.
"Neutron matter is the least understood of the five states of matter, which also includes solids, liquids, gases and plasma," says Kezershvili. "This mysterious extreme state of matter results from the catastrophic implosion-explosion of stars much more massive than our Sun."
Starting with the existence of a single neutron, one of the tiniest objects in our cosmos, and progressing to two-, three- and four-neutron systems and then stars, its largest objects, Kezershvili will offer a brief history of the Universe starting after the Big Bang. He will also discuss different scenarios for its end.
Author/coauthor of more than 85 research papers, Kezerashvili has made valuable contributions to the understanding of a number of challenging issues in the field of nuclear physics, including nuclear matter and high energy nuclear reactions on light atomic nuclei. He is currently collaborating on research with the National Institute of Nuclear Physics and Pisa University, Italy.
Recognized as an innovative educator for implementing computer-based laboratory experiments in general physics and integrating computer-based education into the physics curriculum, Kezerashvili is the author of three textbooks, Experiments in Physics (three editions), Experiments in College Physics and Problems in Physics and Mathematics.
"As a professor, you are always young because you are around young people," he says. "I enjoy seeing my students 'get' physics and fall in love with it. Because for me, physics makes all my weekdays feel like weekends. My whole life revolves around physics."
According to Kezerashvili, physics is the basis of all new technologies. "Achievements in physics in the 20th century, especially quantum optics and atomic, nuclear and solid state physics, changed the face of our civilization for the better," he says.
