Scientists from around the world will gather at Cornell June 2 and 3 for the Bethe Centennial Symposium on Astrophysics, a celebration of the life and contributions of Hans Bethe (1906-2005) and an opportunity to discuss the latest research in the field he pioneered.

The symposium participants, experts in the field and several of Bethe's former colleagues, will explore the future of those areas in physics that captivated Bethe most during the last four decades of his life. The symposium, hosted by Cornell's Departments of Physics and Astronomy, will be held in Clark Hall's Hans Bethe Auditorium (Room 700).

"Hans spent the last 25 years working on supernovae theory, neutrinos and high-energy astrophysics," said Ira Wasserman, Cornell professor of astronomy and the symposium organizer. "We're bringing together some of the leading people in these fields, all of whom knew Hans, and some of whom were Bethe lecturers here at Cornell."

A 1967 Nobel laureate in physics, Bethe, who died last year at 98, was among the last of the giants of the golden age of 20th century physics and the birth of modern atomic theory, and he was one of science's most universally admired figures. He was an emeritus professor of physics at Cornell, having joined the faculty in 1935 after fleeing Nazi Germany because his mother was Jewish. During World War II, at Los Alamos, N.M., Bethe was the head of the Theoretical Physics Division on the Manhattan Project. He was one of the most honored members of the faculty in the university's history for his work in revolutionizing our perception of the real world. But he was equally admired for his reputation for integrity, humility and concern that made him the conscience of science.

The symposium will have four sessions:

• June 2, morning: "Supernovae Observations and Theory," featuring invited speakers Robert Kirshner of Harvard University and Stan Woosley of the University of California-Santa Cruz, and a panel discussion moderated by J. Craig Wheeler of the University of Texas.
• June 2, afternoon: "Neutrino Astrophysics: The Sun and Beyond," featuring invited speakers Wick Haxton of the University of Washington and Art McDonald of Queens University and the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, and a panel discussion moderated by Boris Kayser of Fermilab.
• June 3, morning: "Compact Objects: Astrophysics and Observations," featuring invited speakers Rashid Sunyaev of the Max Planck Institute fur Astrophysik, Garching, Germany, and Shri Kulkarni of the California Institute of Technology, and a panel discussion moderated by Lars Bildsten of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California-Santa Barbara.
• June 3, afternoon: "The Future of High Energy Astrophysics," featuring invited speakers Michael Turner of the University of Chicago, Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology, and Roger Blandford of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford University, and a panel moderated by David Helfand of Columbia University.

Registration and other information about the symposium is available online at http://astro.cornell.edu/~dong/bethe.htm. The registration fee before May 24 is $150, and it is $200 after that. For further information, send an e-mail to Sharon Falletta at falletta@astro.cornell.edu.