From left, Teddy Weeks ’17, Kip Thorne, Zoe Pierrot ’17 (currently the Physics Department paraprof), and Maddie Lucey ’18.

Kip Thorne, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics this fall, presented “Exploring the Universe with Gravitational Waves” in the Cornerstone Arts Center. He delivered the annual Roberts Lecture at CC as part of a retirement celebration for Professor of Physics Barbara Whitten. Thorne, a professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology, was one of three physicists who received the Nobel Prize for the discovery of ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves, which were predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago but had never been directly seen. Thorne was the advisor for CC Associate Professor of Physics Patricia Purdue’s thesis, “Topics in LIGO-related physics: Interferometric speed-meters and tidal work,” at California Institute of Technology.