Aspen Center for Physics

Aspen Center for Physics

Founders	George Stranahan Michael Cohen Robert Craig
Established	1962
Focus	Physics
President	Josh Frieman
Chair	Karin M. Rabe
Location	Aspen , Colorado , United States
Website	http://www.aspenphys.org/

The Aspen Center for Physics (ACP) is a non-profit institution for physics research located in Aspen, Colorado, in the Rocky Mountains region of the United States. Since its foundation in 1962, it has hosted distinguished physicists for short-term visits during seasonal winter and summer programs, to promote collaborative research in fields including astrophysics, cosmology, condensed matter physics, string theory, quantum physics, biophysics, and more.

To date, sixty-six of the center’s affiliates have won Nobel Prizes in Physics and three have won Fields Medals in mathematics. Its affiliates have garnered a wide array of other national and international distinctions, among them the Abel Prize, the Dirac Medal, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the MacArthur Prize, and the Breakthrough Prize. Its visitors have included figures such as the cosmologist and gravitational theorist Stephen Hawking, the particle physicist Murray Gell-Mann, and the condensed matter theorist Philip W. Anderson.

In addition to serving as a locus for physics research, the ACP’s mission has entailed public outreach: offering programs to educate the general public about physics and to stimulate interest in the subject among youth.

History & Public Outreach

The Aspen Center for Physics was founded in 1962 by three people: George Stranahan, Michael Cohen, and Robert W. Craig. George Stranahan, then a postdoctoral fellow at Purdue University, played a critical role in raising funds and early public support for the initiative. He later left physics to become a craft brewer, rancher, and entrepreneur, although he remained a lifelong supporter of the center. Stranahan’s enterprises included the Flying Dog Brewery. Michael Cohen, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, is a condensed matter physicist whose work has investigated the properties of real-world material systems such as ferroelectrics, liquid helium, and biological membranes. Robert W. Craig was the first director of the Aspen Institute, an international non-profit center which supports the exchange of ideas on matters relating to public policy.

From its establishment, the ACP has developed a close relationship with the city of Aspen and has contributed to the cultural life of the local community. It has collaborated with other institutions such as the Aspen Institute, the Aspen Music Festival, the Wheeler Opera House, the Aspen Science Center, and the Pitkin County Library.  

The center has benefitted from the generosity of public support, notably from the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Energy, NASA, and from the gifts of private donors. These funds have helped to bring hundreds of scientists to the center every year, and have enabled the ACP to host a wide array of public lectures and activities. In addition to sponsoring these public events at its campus in Aspen, the ACP has also broadcasted programs on a local-access television station – the “Physics Preview” show on Grassrootstv.org – and on radio, via its ″Radio Physics″ program for high school students on the KDNK station.