Read article: Life after another RAE
Some 15 years and four RAEs later, departments are no longer judged against some statistical average but in terms of the quality of their research as measured against national and international standa...
Read article: Marconi’s painful centenary
The Marconi story (see article) has featured a cast of interesting characters. Marconi himself was a larger-than-life scion of a wealthy Irish-Italian family, an energetic mix of entrepreneur, invento...
This review first appeared in the news section of PhysicsWeb on 8 November. It is said that one of the world’s most eminent quantum-gravity theorists was once asked to explain in his institution...
A full review by Per Dahl, formerly at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, appears in the December issue of Physics World. Somewhat for convenience, the simplistic answer to the question “...
Read article: Are physicists useful?
“But the greatest error of all is mistaking the ultimate end of knowledge. For some men covet knowledge out of a natural curiosity and inquisitive temper; some to entertain the mind with variety...
There has been a growing awareness in the scientific community – and to some degree among the reading public – that the Sun is a marvellously variable and mysterious object about which we ...
Read article: Secret letters cast light on Copenhagen
When the author Michael Frayn spent two years writing Copenhagen, he had no idea how successful the play would become. He doubted that audiences would sit through a historical drama about a war-time m...
Read article: PhysicsWeb gets new look
Six years on, all that has changed. Now it is possible to watch the chair of the Nobel physics committee announce the winners live over the Web, and sites like PhysicsWeb – the Web site of Physi...
Read article: Isaac Newton: the gifted genius
It seems unlikely that we will ever lose our fascination for the man whom David Berlinski calls “the largest figure in the history of Western science” and the author of “the greatest...
Read article: A degree for change
Such a degree would accept students with lower mathematical ability and “build mathematical knowledge and competence during the course of study” (see UK tackles student shortage and pages ...
