As part of upcoming renovations to the Science Center's main entrance, Cabot Library, and the Greenhouse Cafe, prominent physicist Robert Wilson's eye-catching sculpture entitled "Topological III" has been moved to a new home in front of CHSI's Putnam Gallery.
Wilson commingled his artistic sensibilities with an impressive career in high-energy physics. As the first director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Illinois, he restored prairie and a bison herd, built the main building in the style of a French cathedral, and managed the largest particle accelerator of its day.
.Wilson's gleaming bronze sculpture, Topological III, is a three-dimensional analog of a Möbius strip. Its cross section is an equilateral triangle, and this triangle rotates through 120 degrees before the ends meet to form a complete loop. Instead of three surfaces, the final product has one continuous surface that runs three times around the loop.
.
"It only has to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. It has to do with those things. It has to do with, are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things that we really venerate and honor in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending."
— Robert R. Wilson in 1969, answering Congress' question on how the new accelerator will affect the nation's security.
