Professor Dovid Imbo wowed his audience at The Chabad Shul of Leawood as scholar in residence. Speaking Friday night, Shabbat day and at a community program following Shabbat, he was totally engaging and delightful.
Imbo shared his personal journey from inner city Chicago, to being accepted as a member of the elite Harvard Society of Fellows, to becoming a professor in the department of physics at the University of Illinois in Chicago in 1992. Imbo is also the director of the Laboratory for Quantum Theory at the Extremes. His passion and knowledge of physics, math, philosophy and religion is astounding.
“We felt we were in the presence of true genius, yet Professor Imbo was so approachable. He had the ability to take lofty concepts and make them understandable to the layman,” said Helen Lotman, who participated in the post Shabbat program.
Imbo told about his love of Torah and Chasidut, to which he had been introduced during the past five years. He explained that he found it amazing to learn that Chasidut and physics have much in common. His wish is to further the knowledge and understanding of this symmetry by bringing together scholars from each discipline to interact and find even more ways that the two interrelate.
He spoke briefly about kabbalah and the creation of the world by G-d through the process of tzimtzum — the contraction of the infinite G-dly light to enable a finite world to come into existence. This becomes even more understandable through the knowledge of physics as the physicists have discovered that the infinite potential of an electron produces finite energy.
Jill Maidhoff, who attended the Friday evening program, said: “Thank you for bringing Professor Imbo to our community. Jim and I were completely absorbed by the speed of his thoughts, charm of his presentation and incredible depth and breadth of his wisdom. ‘So that’s what genius looks like,’ we said to each other on the way home — and yet so approachable!”
Imbo’s visit to Kansas City was made possible by a generous grant from the Eugene and Marjorie Lipsky Jewish Learning Academy.