Marlan O. Scully gives a presentation on applied physics.

By the end of Marlan Scully’s lecture before about 80 people Monday, the quantum optics physicist’s fingers were powder-white with chalk from charting complex algorithms and chemical properties of laser radiation on the hall’s blackboards.

But he made sure to lighten the technical nature of his lecture with jokes — while pointing to a screenshot of an excerpt from an abstract he published in Physical Review X, he asked the audience to guess what the “X” stood for.

“X doesn’t stand for X-rays,” Scully said. “It stands for extra hassle.”

To address advancements in practical uses for lasers, Scully — an adjunct professor at Texas A&M who also works at Princeton University and Baylor University — commanded the podium in the Biosciences Research Building for this university’s first annual Paint Branch Distinguished Lecture in Applied Physics.

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Though technology titans and science scholars sometimes come to address the student body, the Paint Branch Distinguished Lecture in Applied Physics is unique, as it is the first series at this university that’s solely devoted to applied physics and will take place every fall, said Thomas Murphy, an electrical and computer engineering professor.

“Visiting speakers bring people together — these larger programs really bring people together. It indirectly fosters this sense of community and makes people feel better about studying here and working here to think that UMD gets visits from one of the most noted scholars,” Murphy said.

Scully’s lecture focused on advancements in laser technology, specifically the ability to detect anthrax, a bacterial disease that causes internal bleeding. Scully said his work is important because anthrax is “one of the oldest diseases in history … a true Jurassic Park scenario — scientists are currently studying anthrax spores,” he said.

“They are 40 million years old,” Scully said. “They found these spores in a piece of amber and revived them.”

Scully also noted his extensive research using lasers to amplify — or lengthen — light, to determine bone density and be able to screen for substances that tend to look similar, such as sugar and heroin, he said.

The donors behind the annual Paint Branch lectures named it after the 14-mile Paint Branch watershed that pools into the Anacostia River, Murphy said. The name figuratively represents the purpose of the series, which is “to draw people together from all over campus with a common motivation.”

The committee that was tasked with finding someone to speak for the event looked for people with field-wide recognition, as well as the ability to relate to students, he said.

One fear that arose during the selection process was whether they would be able to explain highly specialized studies to an audience in simple terms, Murphy said. But the event drew a diverse audience to be able to do so.

“I understood a little bit — not half — enough to get the basic picture,” said Josh Isaacs, an electrophysics graduate student. “He’s a very funny guy. … He’s very energetic, especially for a man of his age, and of any age.”

Luke Johnson, a university alumnus who works at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., heard about Scully’s lecture and wanted to attend.

“I was very familiar with the topics he discussed,” Johnson said. “He wrote a pretty awesome textbook on nonlinear optics, and I had his textbook, which is kind of the reason I came to listen to him.”

The hourlong lecture concluded with a short question-and-answer session, when Scully made the audience chuckle by asking himself a question. He also offered advice to students, tying in his own personal experience.

“Find something that’s really interesting, but also learn to weld,” Scully said. “All my sons are engineers, and I always made sure that they were good welders so that if all their jobs were outsourced to China, they would still be set.”