Speaker: Robin Hewitt

This talk will describe a revolutionary new theory of the atomic world that was developed in the 1920s. The theory is called quantum mechanics. This talk will attempt to explain some of the basic ideas of the theory and look at the scientists who contributed to it. Even today some of the conceptual issues raised by the theory are still a matter of dispute among physicists and raise fundamental philosophical questions about the nature of reality. The growth of some new technologies based on quantum mechanics will be described.