Today I end my European tour with a seminar at CERN. It turns out that Stephen Weinberg was scheduled to speak at the same time as I. Although I was scheduled first, Stephen’s rock star status trumped me and my talk was moved 2 hours earlier. The official count for my seminar was 42. Not bad considering the competion.
The fortunate part of being “bumped” was that my host made sure I was well taken care of. I had a reserved front row seat for Weinberg’s seminar and I got to attend the VIP lunch where I met Weinberg, the director of CERN and the spokespersons and heads of several of the groups working here.
My talk seemed to be received quite well and I had several questions afterwards. Notable attendees for my talk included Nobel prize winner Jack Steinberger and Rocky Kolb, author of “The Early Universe”.