Telluride Science Research Center (TSRC) was founded in 1984 as an incubator for molecular science and is the only independent molecular science center in the world. The organization lives at the creative crossroads of chemistry of chemistry, energy, biomedicine, material science, nanotechnology, and more.
Peter Salamon served as TSRC's first Chairman of the
Board and President from 1984 through 1987, and has organized
almost an average of one workshop per year since 1984. A
professor in the mathematics department at San Diego State
University since 1980, he has also held visiting positions at
Tel Aviv University, University of Coopenhagen, University of
Heidelberg, and the Hebrew University.
At the age of ten, Peter emigrated with his family from
Hungary to the United States. He grew up in Chicago, and
eventually attended the University of Chicago, where he got his
PhD in chemistry in the research group of R. Stephen Berry. As a result, he got his
introduction to Colorado workshops as a graduate student in
Aspen. The impetus for starting workshops in Telluride
originated when the Aspen Center for Physics schedule did not
have room for a thermodynamics workshop in their 1984 program.
With encouragement from Steve Berry, he organized the first
Telluride workshop in 1984 and incorporated TSRC as a non-proft
shortly thereafter in January 1985.
Peter managed most of the early logistics and
administration of TSRC, from negotiating the first meeting
space at the Telluride high school in 1984 to applying for
grants to recruiting new organizers. "I went to Telluride January
of 1984 to make arrangements for the first workshop," writes
Peter. "Karma Denton at Telluride Central Reservations gave a
lot of help for arranging housing. The school principal (Cleve
Pemberthy?) let us use the school facilities for free. The
first workshop lasted three weeks and had 18 participants.
Around the second week of the workshop, I went to James Craft,
an attorney in town to start the process of officially
incorporating TSRC as a non-profit, so I guess that is when I
became president. That fall, on Steve's suggestions, I visited
Bill and Tina Reinhardt in Philadelphia and showed them enough
pictures of kids playing in beautiful scenery to convince them
to come as a family. In 1985, there were three workshops. I
believe this is also when Wendy Brooks and the Telluride
Academy took over from Central Reservations to coordinate our
housing. The workshops were on finite-time thermodynamics,
clusters and nonlinear dynamics. I had some student support
from the American Chemical Society, which kept Darius Brooks
and some other local high school students doing some science
and lots of xeroxing."
Ever adventurous, Peter and his then 4-year-old daughter
Anna left from Alta Lakes, five-miles south of Telluride, one
summer morning in 1985 to hike up Palmyra Peak at 13,251 ft,
and then walk back to Telluride descending more than 4,000 ft..
They made it back at 2:00 a.m. the next day, after half the
workshop participants combed the mountains for them. This
spirit of “exploring interesting directions” has been a
hallmark of all the TSRC workshops he has organized and led to
a format he pioneered of picking apart one hour talks in four
hour sessions.
"I filed the first year's taxes with the IRS, but did a
miserable job and Bill volunteered the summer of 1985 to take
over as treasurer. In 1986, there were again the same three
workshops as well as a simulated annealing workshop. I served
as president until January of 1987, when Bill took
over."
Nearly every one of TSRC’s 370 workshops held since 1984
has been housed in a Telluride School District classroom.
Starting with one room in the old cinder block high school,
moving to the historic elementary school, and then to the
current location of the newer Intermediate School (where
thankfully the circuits don’t blow), TSRC has always been a
little “hard” on the school. “The year was 1986,” writes Peter
Salamon. “We were able to use the high school’s computers for
the third year in a row, thanks to sympathetic school
administration and a sympathetic computer science teacher,
Irwin Wetzel. We even got to use the principal’s personal
computer, which we moved from the school to the house Jerzy
Bernholc was renting. The computer suffered a disk crash and
although we spent many hours with Norton utilities trying to
recover what we could for him, he lost about half of his files.
Our access to the school’s computers became more limited after
this event. It took 21 years for the school to grant TSRC
access to their computers again.
In 1988, I ran a neural networks workshop. In
the early nineties, I co-organized three computational
molecular biology (genome stuff) workshops which were funded by
DOE. I was also doing thermo workshops, which by then were
organized by Bjarne Andresen and Karl Heinz Hoffmann. I vividly
recall Bill and Tina's wine and cheese parties, which replaced
the BBQ's during Bill's reign. They had a Camelot feel to them.
The rest gets hazy."
The immense influence TSRC has had on
his scientific development since he was a young scientist
has made him a staunch believer in keeping the Telluride
workshops financially accessible to graduate students and
postdocs. To honor Peter's lasting contribution to TSRC, in
2008 the Board of Directors established a scholarship for young scientists in
his name.
October 2008, Peter Salamon, TSRC Co-
Founder, Professor of Mathematics, San Diego State
University
The Annual TSRC R. Stephen Berry Lecture
In 2002, the board of TSRC decided to honor one of its founders, R. Stephen Berry, University of Chicago James Franck Distinguished
Service Professor Emeritus, by designating an annual lecture series in his name. Each year, the TSRC president invites a special speaker to
give the Stephen Berry lecture as part of the public Town Talk science lecture series. Steve himself gave the first lecture in 2003.
Berry Lecture History
June 26, 2018 "Engines Through the Ages" by Sir Fraser Stoddart, Professor of Chemistry, Northwestern University
June 20, 2017 "Simulating the Quantum World on Classical Computers" by Garnet Chan, Bren Professor in Chemistry, Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Caltech
August 2, 2016 “Beyond Watson & Crick: DNA Quadruplexes and Their Roles in Aging, Cancer, and Zika Virus” by Cynthia Burrows, Distinguish Professor, Thatcher Presidential Endowed Chair of Biological Chemistry, University of Utah
June 23, 2015 “Steve Berry: Scholar, Educator and Visionary” by John Tully, Sterling Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Physics and Applied Physics, Director of the Yale Center for Interface Structures and Phenomena, Yale University. Dr. Tully was among Steve Berry's first Ph. D. students.
July 22, 2014 "Type II Diabetes: An Emerging Epidemic" by Joan Emma Shea, University of California, Santa Barbara
June 18, 2013 “Changing Polar Regions: Threat and opportunity,” by Leonard Barrie, Research Director of the Bolin Center for Climate Research and Professor for Climate and Atmospheric Science at Stockholm University, 2013
July 26, 2012 “The Science of Water: Its quirky, quixotic nature in life and energy” by James L. Skinner, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Joseph O.Hirschfelder Professor of Chemistry, and Member of the National Academy of Sciences
July 26, 2011 “Green Chemistry . . . For Real” by Eric J. Beckman, University of Pittsburgh George M. Bevier Professor of Engineering and Co-Director of the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation
July 27, 2010 ‘’Fuels from Sunlight: Storing solar energy to meet global energy needs” by Michael R. Wasielewski, Northwestern University, Clare Hamilton Hall Professor of Chemistry, and Director of the Argonne-Northwestern Energy Research Center
August 4, 2009 “Personalized Energy: A Carbon-Neutral Energy Supply for Each Individual (x 6 Billion People)”by Daniel G. Nocera, MIT Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy and Professor of Chemistry
July 8, 2008 “Energy and Nanoscience: A Marriage of Convenience” by Mark Ratner, Northwestern University Morrison Professor in the Department of Chemistry, Member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
August 7, 2007 “Is it Science? Global warming, intelligent design, the cosmic anthropic principle, and Einstein’s moon” by Michael E.Kellman, University of Oregon Professor of Theoretical Chemistry & Physical Chemistry
August 1, 2006 “The Chemistry of the Universe” by William Klemperer, Harvard University Research Professor of Physical Chemistry
August 2, 2005 “Lasers: The Light Fantastic” by Carl Lineberger, E. U. Condon Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, University of Colorado and Fellow of JIL
August 10, 2004 “An Illustrated & Literary Tour of Real and Imagined Universes” by William Reinhardt, Chemistry and Physics Professor at University of Washington in Seattle
July 29, 2003 “The Deepest, Simplest, Most General and Most Puzzling Science: Thermodynamics” by R. Stephen Berry, University of Chicago James Franck Distinguied Service Professor Emeritus and Member of the National Academy of Sciences
25th Anniversary Stories
The stories were collected to celebrate TSRC’s 25th Anniversary in 2009.They reveal TSRC’s history
and philosphy, while describing the impact TSRC has on the people who make up our community.
Town
Talks: The TSRC Town Talks focused on
celebrating the "microcosmos" during this 30th anniversary
celebration. The 2014 Town Talks took place in the elegant
Conference Center in Mountain Village, and speakers
included Eric Beckman, Ron Estler, Joan Emma Shea,
John Straub, Paul Rainey, George Weiblen, and more. Thanks to
the Telluride Ski and Golf Company for making the venue
possible.
July 4th
Parade: Scientists and their families
were invited to join TSRC in the wonderful Telluride Fourth
of July parade down Main Street. It is an exceptional small town
parade, wonderful to watch and even better to join.
TSRC, 30 YEARS
OF HISTORY, 1984 - 2014 Origins, 1984In a Telluride schoolhouse, back in 1984, TSRC as
born with one workshop and 18 scientists. Stephen Berry,
University of Chicago chemistry professor, and Peter Salamon,
San Diego State University mathematics professor, found the
remote San Juan Mountains inspirational. They launched TSRC to
bring together international scientists to debate, discuss, and
discover new directions for scientific research in an intimate
setting. Early workshops focused on thermodynamics, chaos
theory, clusters, spectroscopy, and intermolecular dynamics.
Informality and candidness were the organizing principles of
TSRC. Initially, TSRC participants focused on theoretical
science, laying the groundwork for much of today's applied
science. Multidisciplinary meetings with open communication
between junior and senior scientists were key to moving science
forward, they thought, and what better place than
Telluride. Many of the founding scientists still regularly
attend TSRC meetings, including Peter and
Steve. Today, 2014The core values laid by Steve and Peter remain, with
small workshops as our signature meetings. The brightest people
in the world gather at TSRC to tackle pressing problems and
inspire new questions. TSRC is the only independent
molecular science center in the world, attracting 1,400 top-notch scientists in 2014 alone. TSRC scientists come from 92
countries of birth and 535 international institutions. The
center attracts not only theoretical scientists, but also
experimentalists and engineers; scientists doing fundamental
and applied research. And while the vast majority hail from
academic institutions, some scientists come from companies such
as Google, Merck, IBM, Pfizer, and dozens of others. TSRC
lives at the creative crossroads of chemistry, physics,
biology, computational science, mathematics, and
more. In 2014, 46 TSRC meetings were held,
including our first international meeting in France. And TSRC
is now home to three different summer schools, with two others
planned.Future Tomorrows,
2020 TSRC holds true to the intimate meeting style that
makes it so unique. In its state-of-the-art facility, TSRC
thrives as a leading global hub for molecular science with
4,000 international scientists attending a hundred meetings,
year-round. TSRC advances science through face-to-face
interactions among scientists from 600 different institutions
and 100 different countries. TSRC provides the common ground
for addressing critical scientific challenges and catalyzing
new discoveries. TSRC establishes numerous summer schools
for undergraduates, as well as graduate students, to provide a
critical complement to university education. Availing its
resources locally, TSRC's education outreach programs continue
to inform and inspire the Telluride regional
community.
Telluride Science Research Center
Post Office Box 2429, Telluride CO 81435
Tel: + 970.708.4426
Email: info@telluridescience.org
