Europe and America
When the European Physical Society (EPS) holds its general conference in London this month, there is likely to be much talk over coffee about the need for Europe to match the United States in a variet...
J D Bernal: genius yes, sage no
At the age of two, John Desmond Bernal was taken by his American mother from their farm in Ireland to see his grandmother in California. He amazed other passengers on the steamship by talking in both ...
Read article: String theory: simple yet elegant
String theory: simple yet elegant
String theory dates back some 30 years, but it was the “first string revolution” of 1984 that intensified interest in this, the most promising candidate for a “theory of everything&#...
The new space age
When astronomers train their telescopes on the heavens, they are not always looking for the most distant objects in the sky. Indeed there is much to be learnt from focusing a telescope closer to home....
Feynman’s spirit lives on in computing
Richard Feynman, both as a man and as a scientist, excited varied reactions: you either loved him or you hated him. As a man, he was either narrow-minded and sexist, or else charming and completely fa...
Cosmology bestsellers
1. The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene A fascinating and thought-provoking journey through the mysteries of space, time, and ma...
‘Rocket science’: the facts
A frequent complaint at gatherings of senior physicists is that that everyone with a PhD in theoretical physics abandons research to follow a lucrative career as a “rocket scientist” in th...
Helping physics to help itself
There is no doubt that the world has an increasingly intense love-hate relationship with science. Physics certainly does not escape this deep ambivalence, and we naturally wonder if there is anything ...
Read article: Atomic secrets and the red scare
Atomic secrets and the red scare
Almost everyone has heard of the “Oppenheimer affair”. It took place between 1953-54 when the father of the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer, was subjected to a humiliating show trial by th...
Patents versus patience
Physicists are rightly proud of the way that basic research in the past has paid off in terms of technology that is widely used everyday. We all know the examples: transistors, lasers, optical fibres,...
