Earnest C. Watson Lecture Series

Watson conducting his famous "liquid-air" experiment at Caltech in 1953 during a Friday Evening Demonstration Lecture.

Established in 1922, the Watson Lectures bring Caltech's most innovative scientific research to the public.

Originally known as the "Friday Evening Demonstration Lectures," this public lecture series was started by Earnest C. Watson, a professor of physics at Caltech from 1919 to 1959, in order to share modern scientific advances with the public. Eventually renamed in his honor, the Watson Lectures continue to spotlight the pioneering research Caltech's faculty is currently conducting.

Watson Lectures are free and open to the public.

Watch Live

Lectures will be live-streamed here so that you can watch them in real time. Virtual audience members can submit questions during the broadcast via the YouTube chat feed.

Upcoming Lectures

The upcoming season's program will be announced soon. In the meantime, please explore past lectures below.

Explore Past Lectures

Global sea level rise is one of the major environmental challenges of the 21st century. As lead scientist for multiple NASA JPL projects, Josh Willis and team are addressing this urgent problem from above and below. The Jason and Sentinel-6 satellites are measuring sea levels from space, and Oceans Melting Greenland, an airborne mission, is probing the island’s warming coastal waters to help better predict the rising seas of the future. In this lecture, Willis will discuss how these missions will provide revolutionary data for modeling ocean and ice interactions and lead to improved estimates of global sea level rise.

Entanglement refers to a connection that can occur between quantum particles even when they are far apart from each other. Entanglement underpins everything from quantum teleportation to the quantum computation revolution. In this lecture, Scott Cushing discusses a less explored aspect of entanglement: what we can learn about both small and somewhat larger objects when they are forced to interact with entangled photons. The knowledge gained from these new tools could lead to cutting-edge technologies.

Recent physics breakthroughs have revealed that, in carefully engineered materials, quantum effects not only show up in the macroscopic world but also fundamentally change the way these materials behave. Xie Chen covers superconductivity, topological order, and a range of phenomena in quantum matters that may hold unprecedented power for quantum computers and even for our fundamental understanding of the universe.

The events of 9/11 spurred Julia Kornfield's research team to begin researching polymers that, when added to fuels like gasoline, minimize the risk of explosion when ignited. These polymers, known as megasupramolecules, change the way liquid fuels flow and could help reduce fatalities and injuries from plane crashes, auto accidents, and IED attacks on the battlefield.

Find more past Watson Lectures on Caltech's YouTube channel.