Light, the Nexus in Phyiscs

The United Nations declared 2015 to be "The International Year of Light and Light-Based Technologies." In a concept map of physics, the study of light stands at all the major intersections. Just as scattered light rays illuminate the whole house, insights into light have illuminated the whole of physics.. In 1267 Roger Bacon wrote of optics, "no other science has so much sweetness and beauty and utility. Therefore it is the flower of the whole of philosophy and through it, and not without it, can other sciences be known." We typically think of optics as a study of light, but here we imagine the whole of physics as the study of light. This talk will not be a formal history, but a celebration of connections in physics that are made by light.