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Office of the Director

NIST Colloquium Series

The NIST colloquium series provides an opportunity for staff to hear the views of outstanding scientists, scholars, explorers, and leaders on topics of current interest. It is a distinguished lecturer series to raise the intellectual climate at NIST: challenging, visionary, and speculative concepts are welcome.

Speakers have included dozens of Nobel Prize and MacArthur Fellowship winners, as well as foremost leaders in industry and government. A number of prominent writers, academics, and historians have spoken in the series.

Talks occur on the third Thursday of each month from September through May. To learn more about the NIST Colloquium Series, please contact colloquium [at] nist.gov (colloquium[at]nist[dot]gov).

Past Speakers

Credit: courtesy Adam Savage

NIST Colloquium Series: (Dr. Gregory Wirth) NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope: The Engineering Marvel Opening New Windows on the Cosmos — Decades of eager anticipation turned to ecstasy for astronomers worldwide as the powerful new James Webb Space Telescope successfully launched on Christmas morning 2021. The observatory’s giant primary mirror — the largest ever deployed in orbit — was delicately folded to fit into the rocket, successfully deployed in space, and then aligned over a four-month commissioning campaign. This talk shares the key technological innovations that enabled NASA to build this telescope, describes how the JWST Wavefront Science team focused the optics, and reviews the stunning science images astronomers are acquiring with this powerful new tool for astrophysics.

Additional videos of colloquium talks are available in our Video Gallery.

Created March 8, 2013, Updated October 30, 2023