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: Isaac Newton: the gifted genius
There is no doubt that Italy is a world force in physics. When the nations of the world are ranked by the number of physics papers that they publish, Italy is sixth. It also makes the top ten when nat...
Read article: Returning to the Fermi level
With the new academic year about to begin, undergraduate students will soon be thinking about whether to apply for a PhD. Doing a doctorate can, of course, be a very rewarding experience. It allows st...
Read article: PhDs are worth more for women
The Northern Lights is a well researched biographical tale of the Norwegian physicist and genius Kristian Birkeland, whose life was spent exclusively in pursuit of the scientific goal of understanding...
Read article: The quest for the Northern Lights
The American public's fears of tritium contributed to the closure of a famous neutron facility
Read article: True tritium tales, toxic and non-toxic
Few things in life are utterly black or white. Even scientific ideas come in shades of “truth”, which is arrived at differently in different kinds of science. There are other gradations to...
Read article: Spotting craziness in cloud-cuckoo-land
Currently there are, at most, five centres operating in the front line of particle physics: CERN and DESY in Europe, Fermilab and Stanford in the US, and KEK in Japan. How many of these laboratories a...
Read article: Straight choices
Why is it that you can warm your hands by blowing gently against them and cool them by blowing hard? The answer requires a clear understanding of physics and a rudimentary knowledge of the workings of...
Read article: Burst bangers and brain busters
The report was commissioned from the Institute for Employment Studies by the physics programme of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to examine the views of organizations t...
Read article: Physics and work
In 1984 – the year made famous by George Orwell – I attended a physics conference in the city of Leipzig, East Germany. It was my first visit since I had been a student there 16 years befo...
Read article: A universe in the life of an oxygen atom
