Four years ago, our group started a project aimed at visualizing the ultrafast dynamics of individual molecules at room temperature¹. As a result, we now have the capability of resolving femtosecond effects in a wide range of systems ², from plasmonic structures to photosynthetic light harvesting complexes.

The science of those years in between will be the topic of this seminar. I will use the results of our work as a framework but change the usual perspective: what appears in journals and conference talks tends to represent science as an abstract philosophical ideal, an interplay between a falsifiable theory and reproducible experiments; I’ll take the opportunity of this less formal seminar to emphasize science as a human activity, with its ups and downs, errors and strokes of luck, long ways around and breakthroughs.

After all, we might have read Popper once, but we fight with stubborn experiments, referees in a bad mood and ourselves being wrong every day.

1. Brinks, Stefani, van Hulst, Nanoscale spatial effects of pulse shaping, Ultrafast Phenomena XVI, 92, 890 (2009)
2. Brinks et al, Visualizing and controlling vibrational wave packets of single molecules, Nature, 465, 905 (2010)

Wednesday, October 6, 2010, 17:00. Seminar Room