The Wittenberg Series welcomed Laura H. Greene, Swanlund Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Feb. 20. Greene’s talk, “High-Temperature Superconductors: From Broken Symmetries to Cell Phones,” served as the Phi Beta Kappa lecture.

An internationally recognized experimentalist, Greene has made profound and lasting contributions to condensed matter physics and the physics of novel materials, particularly superconductors. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at The Ohio State University and a Ph.D. in physics from Cornell University, where she investigated the linear and non-linear far-infrared properties of materials.

Prior to joining the faculty at Illinois in 1992, she conducted research at Bell Laboratories and then Bellcore. She has also served on General Council and Executive Board of the American Physical Society, and is a founding member of the Board of Trustees of the Los Alamos-based Institute of Complex and Adaptive Materials.