Physicist Lisa Randall Receives 2009 Benjamin Franklin Creativity Laureate Award at Smithsonian Event

The Smithsonian Associates and the Creativity Foundation have named renowned physicist Lisa Randall as the recipient of the eighth annual Benjamin Franklin Creativity Laureate Award. Randall will discuss the role of creativity in her life and work with University of Chicago professor Michael Turner Friday, April 24, at 7 p.m. in Baird Auditorium in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

The Benjamin Franklin Creativity Laureate Award honors and celebrates the world’s most creative thinkers and innovators in the arts, sciences and humanities, in traditional and emerging disciplines. Previous recipients were Yo-Yo Ma, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Eric Kandel, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Jules Feiffer, Ted Turner and Meryl Streep. Tickets for the award ceremony and interview are $25 for general admission, $15 for members and $10 for students with ID. For tickets and information call (202) 633-3030 or visit SmithsonianAssociates.org.

Randall is best known for her work involving extra dimensions of space, or “warped” geometries, and her suggestion that could explain the relative weakness of gravity and that we may live in a world with an infinite extra dimension—possibly even in a three-dimensional sinkhole in a higher-dimensional universe. This has resulted in her being one of the most-cited theoretical physicists in the world. Time magazine included her in its 2007 list of the 100 most influential people, and Newsweek cited Randall as “one of the most promising theoretical physicists of her generation.” Her book “Warped Passages” was included in the New York Times’ list of the 100 most notable books of 2005.

Randall is a professor of physics at Harvard University and is tenured at Princeton and MIT. She has served on the editorial boards of several major journals and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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