Free public lecture explores Einstein’s blackboards
The annual Atlantic General Relativity (AGR) Conference will be held at Mount Saint Vincent University from May 31 to June 2, 2026. The conference will feature speakers and guests from across Canada discussing all aspects of classical and quantum gravity, and relativistic astrophysics.
While much is understood about how gravity works for large objects in our universe – like planets and stars – there are still big unanswered questions about how gravity behaves at the smallest scales and in the most extreme conditions. Researchers right here in the Atlantic region are working to bridge that gap.
A free public lecture on Sunday, May 31 from 3 to 4:15 p.m. in the McCain Centre at MSVU, Room 105/6 [campus map], will explore “Einstein’s Blackboards” and will be given by a world expert on the subject, Dr. Dwight Vincent of the University of Winnipeg. All are welcome.
Dr. Vincent will discuss Einstein’s blackboards from a historical perspective, how they convey Einstein’s ideas about relativity and gravitation, and how some of the universities where Einstein spoke decided to preserve some of the blackboards with his writing intact. Dr. Vincent will talk about Einstein’s ideas and tell the stories behind many of the blackboards, including the blackboard from Oxford University where Einstein lectured in 1931. The blackboard from that lecture can be viewed at the History of Science Museum in Oxford and includes a description of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity and the expansion of the universe.
Other conference speakers will include Dr. Scott A. Hughes (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Dr. Luigi Gallo (Saint Mary’s University) on June 1 and June 2, respectively. Dr. Hughes’s presentation will focus on the current state of gravitational research and will start a morning dedicated to celebrating Dr. Ken Dunn, a Dalhousie mathematician who was also a well-known Nova Scotian swimming coach. Dr. Gallo’s presentation will focus on how data can be used to examine the properties of black holes.
Each year, the Atlantic General Relativity Conference also includes talks by graduate students from Atlantic Canada, giving them a venue to present their work and an opportunity to network with academics and researchers from across the country. This year will feature presentations by more than a dozen graduate students on topics ranging from potential ways to unite quantum theory and gravity to studying supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies.
The first AGR Conference was held in 2012 at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. Since then, the conference has grown and has become a yearly event for the Atlantic Canada relativity community. MSVU is delighted to host the conference this year that will include participation from some of the Mount science faculty and students from our undergraduate programs in the Sciences.