Daily News Photo by JOY BLACKBURN Noted physicist Lawrence Krauss lectures University of the Virgin Islands students, faculty and others at Chase Auditorium on Wednesday.

ST. THOMAS - Noted physicist and bestselling author Lawrence Krauss on Wednesday ushered a rapt audience at the University of the Virgin Islands through some of the major advances in physics over the years and into the mysteries of the universe.

"What I really hope to do is leave you dizzy by the end of this," Krauss said as he launched into his lecture at UVI's Chase Auditorium. A full house of students, faculty, staff and visitors turned out for the lecture, part of UVI's Charter Week activities.

Krauss, an internationally known theoretical physicist who chairs the physics department at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, is in the territory this week as part of a private gathering of some of the leading theoretical and experimental physicists in the world.

Among the 22 scientists scheduled to attend the private five-day workshop at The Ritz-Carlton are three Nobel laureates - Gerardus 't Hooft, David Gross and Frank Wilczek.

Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University, "whose work on gravity and the nature of black holes has helped drive both our theoretical and experimental understanding of gravity over the past 30 years," also is expected to attend, according to a statement released by the J. Epstein Virgin Islands Foundation, which is jointly sponsoring the event with the Center for Education and Research in Cosmology and Astrophysics at Case Western Reserve University.

At the workshop, physicists will present their latest findings and explore and debate new proposals to address some of the outstanding puzzles in physics, the statement said.

Sparking curiosity about those puzzles and reaching out to young minds in the territory also is part of the five-day workshop, said Cecile deJongh, director of the foundation.

In addition to Krauss' presentation Wednesday, the Nobel laureates and Edward Thomas Jr., a graduate of Charlotte Amalie High School and an associate professor of physics at Auburn University, are scheduled to speak to high school students from across the island Monday morning at the Marin Center at Antilles School, deJongh said.

"It's important to do outreach - to bring people here that people in the Virgin Islands wouldn't normally have access to," deJongh said.

- Contact Joy Blackburn at 774-8772 ext. 303 or e-mail blackburn@dailynews.vi.