The Chief Executives’ Club at Queen’s University Belfast and the Royal Irish Academy were delighted to welcome Professor Alain Aspect ForMemRS; eminent French Physicist from the Institut D'Optique, Université Paris-Saclay to deliver the 2019 John Bell Day Lecture on Wednesday 6 November.

There was a capacity audience in the magnificent Computer Science Buidling, Queen's University Belfast to hear Professor Aspect's lecutre, 'A New Quantum Revolution: From Einstein's Questions to Quantum Information'.

After welcome remarks; Professor Robert Bowman, Head of the School of Maths and Physics at Queen's University Belfast and Seagate Technology/Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair in Advanced Materials for Data Storage, introduced Professor Alain Aspect. Alain is known for his experiments illuminating the most intriguing properties of quantum mechanics. His Bell's inequalities tests with pairs of entangled photons (1982) have contributed to settle a debate between Albert Einstein and Nils Bohr, started in 1935. He has also, with Philippe Grangier, given a striking demonstration of wave-particle duality for a single photon, and realized the Wheeler's delayed choice experiment.

Professor Aspect, entertained an audience of business people, academics and students with details of his experiments on John Bell's research, and facilitated by Professor Mauro Paternostro fielded a thorough question and answer session. The evening was closed by Professor Gerry McKenna, Vice-Chancellor of the Royal Irish Academy who presented Professor Aspect with a small gift to thank him for travelling from Paris to speak at a lecture named after one the mentors of his research.