In 2002 the board of TSRC decided to honor one of its founders, R. Stephen Berry, University of Chicago James Franck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, by designating an annual lecture series in his name.
In the inaugural TSRC year of 1984, here sits Steve on the summit of Mount Sneffels, 14,140’ above sea level, which he climbed with fellow TSRC scientists Peter Salamon and Bjarne Andresen.
The Founding of TSRC according to Berry:
“The origin of the idea of TSRC was in 1983, when we'd had a very successful workshop at the Aspen Center for Physics on Finite Time Thermodynamics. It was so successful that some people wanted to have another in 1984. We'd had one in 1981 in Aspen, I believe, and we could have had one in 1985, but, if my memory holds, we couldn't get a slot at the Aspen Center for Physics for 1984. At least we couldn't get one at a time when the appropriate people could come. Then Peter Salamon said this, or something close to it, to me, "We both know Telluride and like it. Why don't we try to have a workshop there?" I thought that was a brilliant idea. I said I would be very happy to help, but that Peter would have to take prime responsibility for the organizing. We held that first Telluride workshop for three weeks, and it was indeed a great success. We decided to have at least two in 1985, one on finite-time thermodynamics and one on clusters, and maybe a third. Bill Reinhardt had just moved to Penn, and we thought perhaps he was a bit homesick for Colorado, where he'd been before the move. Indeed, he liked the idea and organized a workshop on chaos for 1984, so there were indeed three that year. Wendy Brooks did all the local arrangements. I think that was the first year that her son Darius was the General Helper. It was that year, I believe, when we formalized the structure into the Telluride Summer Research Center. I will have to check my files to see when Moshe Shapiro, from the Weizmann Institute in Israel, asked "Why is it the Telluride SUMMER Research Center? Why not the Telluride SCIENCE Research Center, with meetings in the Winter, too?" The answer then was that the only available venue was the old school. Happily, that's all changed now.” R. Stephen Berry, October 16, 2007
July 29, 2003
R. Stephen Berry, University of Chicago distinguished professor of chemistry, McArthur Fellow, and National Academy of Sciences Officer
"The Deepest, Simplest, Most General and Most Puzzling Science: Thermodynamics"
August 10, 2004
William Reinhardt, Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, Guggenheim Fellow, Fulbright Senior Scholar, Chemistry and Physics Professor at University of Washington in Seattle
"An Illustrated & Literary Tour of Real and Imagined Universes"
August 2, 2005
Carl Lineberger, E. U. Condon Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, University of Colorado and Fellow of JILA
"Lasers: The Light Fantastic"
August 1, 2006
William Klemperer, PhD, Harvard University Research Professor of Physical Chemistry
"The Chemistry of the Universe"
August 7, 2007
Michael E. Kellman, University of Oregon Professor of Theoretical Chemistry & Physical Chemistry
“Is it Science? Global warming, intelligent design, the cosmic anthropic principle, and Einstein’s moon”
July 8, 2008
Mark Ratner, Northwestern University Morrison Professor in the Department of Chemistry, member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
“Energy and Nanoscience: A Marriage of Convenience”
