Science and societies
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 Socie...
Still uncertain about Heisenberg
“Heisenberg is an intelligent man, but a typical German (that is to say a Tacitus).” So wrote Albert Einstein to his Swiss confidant Carl Seelig, in January 1953. Although the quotation do...
Ideas for a new era
Three major reports have already been published – on atomic, molecular and optical science; plasma science; and elementary-particle physics – and reports on nuclear physics and gravitation...
Learning lessons about ethics
To what extent should a formal education in ethics be part of the university physics curriculum? When this question is raised in the physics community, the response is often that there is no significa...
Science gets hot under the crust
On page 38 of this provocative book, Thomas Gold describes how he began “nosing around in the field of petroleum geology” only after establishing himself as an esteemed astronomer and phys...
Book your busman’s holiday
When it comes to employing new graduates, scientific institutions are increasingly keen to take on people who have practical scientific experience as well as the academic understanding that a physics ...
Physics at work
Colloids are also immensely important in a range of industries. Although the products themselves are low-tech – paint, mayonnaise, toothpaste and ice cream, for instance – the physics unde...
How molecules defy the demon
It was in 1867, in a letter to his friend and colleague Peter Tait, that James Clerk Maxwell first stated his renowned “demon paradox”. He imagined a vessel with two compartments, separate...
How to rebuild Russian science
Transforming the Soviet Union’s highly centralized communist regime into an open, democratic society based on free-market principles has proved to be much harder than people at first thought. Li...
Nuclear tales
Every year we pump 60 million tons of nitrogen oxides, 100 million tons of sulphur dioxide and 20 000 million tons of carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. Surely n...
