College of Arts and Sciences

The Morgan Science Lecture Series is made possible by a gift from the G. William Morgan Family. The purpose of the Morgan Science Lecture Series is to stimulate scientific understanding and research among the sciences by bringing innovative and prominent researchers to Appalachian State University's campus.

Read more about the history of the Morgan Science Lecture Series.

Thank you to everyone who attended the 2025 Morgan Science Lecture! Please stay tuned for details about the next Morgan Science Lecture in Fall 2027.

The College of Arts and Sciences and Department of Physics and Astronomy hosted world-renowned physicist Dr. Sylvester James Gates Jr. as the 2025 Morgan Science Lecture Series speaker on Tuesday, October 21, 2025.

In the afternoon, Gates visited the Department of Physics and Astronomy to give a technical talk, titled "A Physicist Following Faraday’s Hint in the Search for Quantum Gravity." In his talk, Gates discussed how computers have enhanced the study of electromagnetic induction. He described how Faraday discovered this phenomenon by visualizing magnetic fields around wires like wheels around a spoke—an insight that deepened our understanding of magnetic field physics. Later, researchers used computers to build on this concept and expand its applications.

Gates' visit culminated with the Morgan Science Lecture, titled "Adinkras-2-Adynkras." In his lecture, Gates explored a fascinating intersection of art and mathematics in the pursuit of quantum gravity. He described how the discovery of a class of artistic images—a "new visual technology" developed with Michael Faux in 2004—provided the key to solving a decades-old, previously unsolvable problem known as the "Witten Problem." This problem, which contained over 4.2 billion yes-or-no mathematical puzzles, related to quantum gravity. The speaker also drew a historical parallel to the late 1940s, when Richard Feynman's iconic visual imagery technique, now called Feynman diagrams, revolutionized quantum physics calculations. Ultimately, the talk revealed how visual aids, from Feynman's diagrams to Gates's novel artistic images, have repeatedly empowered major breakthroughs in the field.