Harvard Club of Washington $15 and Full-time Students with valid IDs $10. Please call (202) 633-3030 to purchase tickets.

In her distinguished career, Lisa Randall hit the ground running and quickly established herself by earning tenure at Princeton, MIT, and Harvard. Even while at Stuyvesant High School in New York City, she tied for first place in the national Westinghouse Science Talent Search.

Her desire to learn the physics underlying the standard model of particle physics led her to research and work on the standard model, supersymmetry, cosmology, string theory, and grand unified theories, among other subjects. But she has become best known for her work involving extra dimensions of space, or “warped” geometries, and her suggestion that might explain the weakness of gravity or allow us to live in a world with an infinite extra dimension—possibly even in a three-dimensional sinkhole in a higher-dimensional universe. This resulted in her being the most cited theoretical physicist in the world.

Randall has organized many conferences and served on the editorial board of several major journals. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Arts and Sciences. 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 100 most notable books of 2005.

In this special evening, Randall, a professor of physics at Harvard University, is interviewed by University of Chicago professor Michael Turner and receives the eighth annual Benjamin Franklin Creativity Award. After the ceremony, she reflects on the role of the creative process in her life and work, including the sources of her creativity and inspiration and her role models.

The Smithsonian Associates is proud to present Lisa Randall with the Benjamin Franklin Creativity Laureate Award, which recognizes and celebrates some of the world’s most creative thinkers, innovators, and catalysts in the arts, sciences, and humanities, in both 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. The award is made possible by the Creativity Collaboration, a joint program of The Smithsonian Associates and the Creativity Foundation.

CODE: 1J0-532