Collaborating with the enemy?
About a year ago I was asked to speak at a local women’s studies conference on mathematics, science and technology. I didn’t flatter myself at having been chosen, because nearly every loca...
Beyond understanding
There was an inevitable irony in the timing of a recent report on “science and society” published by the House of Lords select committee on science and technology. The report was released ...
Lise Meitner: a nuclear heroine?
In 1897 Max Planck wrote the following about the question of whether women should be allowed to study at German universities: “If a woman has a special gift for the tasks of theoretical physics&...
Science: a messy and clumsy business
Mike Fortun and Herbert Bernstein’s book is a masterpiece – a particularly intelligent, useful and unusual book. It will constitute, I strongly believe, a solid mooring point to help us fa...
DIAMOND: it’s not too late
The Millennium Dome in London – a £758m high-tech visitor attraction that was built largely with government money – is a national laughing stock in the UK. But at least the Dome opene...
Read article: Dirac, Einstein and physics
Dirac, Einstein and physics
Our greatest endeavour in basic science over the past century has, undoubtedly, been the study of the electromagnetic, strong and weak forces. Although the general theory of relativity was formulated ...
Read article: Coded secrets cracked open
Coded secrets cracked open
Immediately after humans discovered writing, they must also have discovered that concealing information is almost as important as expressing it. They also learned that there is nothing more fascinatin...
Meet Lynda Williams – ‘the physics chanteuse’
Originally inspired by the astronomer and science popularizer Carl Sagan, Lynda Williams began singing about her favourite subject – physics – in 1995. At the time she was a graduate physi...
Behind closed doors
One of the challenges facing any physics magazine is to adequately cover the activities and interests of physicists working in industry. For a long time Physics World has followed a policy that the be...
Read article: Solving a knotty problem
Solving a knotty problem
Publishers seem to have hit on a winning formula for non-fiction books in recent years. Take a seemingly esoteric subject, mix in lots of history, add plenty of anecdotes, keep it short, and print the...
