There is significant evidence that the majority of matter in the universe — roughly 85% — is not made of atoms. Whatever that matter is, it gravitates, does not interact with light the same way normal matter does, and is responsible for the formation of galaxies and most other large-scale structure in the universe. In this lecture, David E. Kaplan will put this phenomenon in historical context in terms of understanding the cosmos. He will then describe the evidence for this and the many attempts to find other properties of “dark matter,” including efforts to directly detect it in laboratories.

Kaplan received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1999. He had postdoctoral positions at the University of Chicago/Argonne National Laboratory and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and he then joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University in 2002. Kaplan discovers possible theoretical extensions to the Standard Model of Particle Physics and cosmology, and novel ways to discover those and other models. An American Physical Society Fellow, Kaplan was also awarded a National Academy of Sciences Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellowship and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and he was named as an Outstanding Junior Investigator by the United States Department of Energy. Kaplan created and produced the documentary “Particle Fever,” which won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award and other accolades.