Two of the oldest and largest physical societies in the world celebrate anniversaries this year. The Institute of Physics, which publishes this magazine, can trace its roots back to the Physical Society that was formed in London 125 years ago. And the American Physical Society (APS) is currently celebrating its centennial. Other venerable societies of physicists include the Société Française de Physique (SFP) formed in 1873 and the Società Italiana di Fisica, which dates from 1897. Not surprisingly the roles of societies have changed considerably over the past century. The traditional activities of organizing meetings and publishing journals remain important – and remain big business – but the need for societies to act as advocates for their subject is increasing. This advocacy can take several forms: encouraging young people to study physics; supporting teachers in schools; lobbying on behalf of physics as a discipline in universities; and engaging in a host of activities related to innovation and technology transfer. Examples of specific activities include developing new curricula and syllabuses, and making the case for adequate research budgets to governments and funding bodies. Recent events in the US show that it is often in the interests of physics to present a united front with other scientific disciplines when lobbying the government for research funds.
However, physical societies also differ a great deal from nation to nation. The American Institute of Physics, for instance, is an umbrella organization of ten societies with a total membership in excess of 100 000, some 40 000 of whom are in the APS. Europe has two large societies – the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft with over 30 000 members, and the Institute of Physics with over 20 000 – and a large number of much smaller societies. The SFP in France, for example, has around 3000 members. However, these figures do not reflect the relative level of activity in physics in these countries but other factors such as different criteria for membership. The European Physical Society, formed in 1968, has around 3000 individual members and a further 77 000 members in 36 national societies. Anniversaries are naturally a time for looking back and taking stock. The recently published history of the Physical Society and the Institute of Physics* is a highly readable volume that starts with the emergence of physics as a separate scientific discipline in the 1830s and 1840s, and goes on to cover Maxwell’s early resistance to the Physical Society, the propaganda committee of the Institute, thundering letters to The Times from Sir Lawrence Bragg and the Institute’s current work. The American Physical Society, meanwhile, has published an impressive 500-page special issue of Reviews of Modern Physics , with articles on all areas of physics, including applications and historical perspectives. It is hard to disagree with Hans Bethe’s comment in the introduction: “Looking at the predictions of 100 years ago, it would be foolish to make predictions for the next 100 years.”
*125 Years (ed) J Lewis (Institute of Physics Publishing)
Zero-sum games
When is something zero and when is it not? Recently we reported on a dispute between two particle-physics labs about an effect known as direct CP violation. In 1993 a team at CERN reported a value for this effect that was 3.5 standard deviations above zero: this means that the probability of the effect being zero (or less) was 0.05%. The same year a team at Fermilab reported a much lower value that was only 1.25 standard deviations above zero. So did direct CP violation really exist or not? An improved experiment at Fermilab has now reported a result that is an impressive 7.0 standard deviations above zero – and much closer to the old CERN result than the previous Fermilab one. As the two labs debate the difference between observing and establishing, the theorists who showed how to include CP violation in the Standard Model of particle physics – Makoto Kobayashi and Toshikide Maskawa – could well be in line for a Nobel prize.
