After 40 years lecturing on physics and technology, you’d think I’d be ready for any classroom challenge thrown at me. Surely, during that time, I’d have covered all the bases? As an academic with a background in designing military communication systems, I’m used to giving in-depth technical lectures to specialists. I’ve delivered PowerPoint presentations to a city mayor and council dignitaries (I’m still not sure why, to be honest). And perhaps most terrifying of all, I’ve even had my mother sit in on one of my classes.
During my retirement, I’ve taken part in outreach events at festivals, where I’ve learned how to do science demonstrations to small groups that have included everyone from babies to great-grandparents. I once even gave a talk about noted local engineers to a meeting of the Women’s Institute in what was basically a shed in a Devon hamlet. But nothing could have prepared me for a series of three talks I gave earlier this year.
I’d been invited to a school to speak to three classes, each with about 50 children aged between six and 11. The remit from the headteacher was simple: talk about “My career as a physicist”. To be honest, most of my working career focused on things like phased-array antennas, ferrite anisotropy and computer modelling of microwave circuits, which isn’t exactly easy to adapt for a young audience.
But for a decade or so my research switched to sports physics and I’ve given talks to more than 200 sports scientists in a single room. I once even wrote a book called Projectile Dynamics in Sport (Routledge, 2011). So I turned up at the school armed with a bag full of balls, shuttlecocks, Frisbees and flying rings. I also had a javelin (in the form of a telescopic screen pointer) and a “secret weapon” for my grand finale.
Our first game was “guess the sport”. The pupils did well, correctly discriminating the difference between a basketball, softball and a football, and even between an American football and a rugby ball. We discussed the purposes of dimples on a golf ball, the seam on a cricket ball and the “skirt” on a shuttlecock – the feathers, which are always taken from the right wing of a goose. Unless they are plastic.
As physicists, you’re probably wondering why the feathers are taken from its right side – and I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader. But one pupil was more interested in the poor goose, asking me what happens when its feathers are pulled out. Thinking on my feet, I said the feathers grow back and the bird isn’t hurt. Truth is I have no idea, but I didn’t want to upset her.
Despite the look of abject terror on the teachers’ faces, we did not descend into anarchy
Then: the finale. From my bag I took out a genuine Aboriginal boomerang, complete with authentic religious symbols. Not wanting to delve into Indigenous Australian culture or discuss a boomerang’s return mechanism in terms of gyroscopy and precession, I instead allowed the class to throw around three foam versions of it. Despite the look of abject terror on the teachers’ faces, we did not descend into anarchy but ended each session with five minutes of carefree enjoyment.
There is something uniquely joyful about the energy of children when they engage in learning. At this stage, curiosity is all. They ask questions because they genuinely want to know how the world works. And when I asked them a question, hands shot up so fast and arms were waved around so frantically to attract my attention that some pupils’ entire body shook. At one point I picked out an eager firecracker who swiftly realized he didn’t know the answer and shrank into a self-aware ball of discomfort.
Mostly, though, children’s excitement is infectious. I left the school buzzing and on a high. I loved it. In this vibrant environment, learning isn’t just about facts or skills; it’s about puzzle-solving, discovery, imagination, excitement and a growing sense of independence. The enthusiasm of young learners turns the classroom into a place of shared exploration, where every day brings something new to spark their imagination.
How lucky primary teachers are to work in such a setting, and how lucky I was to be invited into their world.
A new type of nanostructured lasing system called a metalaser emits light with highly tuneable wavefronts – something that had proved impossible to achieve with conventional semiconductor lasers. According to the researchers in China who developed it, the new metalaser can generate speckle-free laser holograms and could revolutionize the field of laser displays.
The first semiconductor lasers were invented in the 1960s and many variants have since been developed. Their numerous advantages – including small size, long lifetimes and low operating voltages – mean they are routinely employed in applications ranging from optical communications and interconnects to biomedical imaging and optical displays.
To make further progress with this class of lasers, researchers have been exploring ways of creating them at the nanoscale. One route for doing this is to integrate light-scattering arrays called metasurfaces with laser mirrors or insert them inside resonators. However, the wavefronts of the light emitted by these metalasers have proven very difficult to control, and to date only a few simple profiles have been possible without introducing additional optical elements.
Not significantly affected by perturbations
In the new work, a team led by Qinghai Song of the Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, created a metalaser that consists of silicon nitride nanodisks that have holes in their centres and are arranged in a periodic array. This configuration generates bound states in a continuous medium (BICs). Since the laser energy is concentrated in the centre of each nanodisk, the wavelength of the BIC is not significantly affected by perturbations such as tiny holes in the structure.
“At the same time, the in-plane electric fields of these modes are distributed along the periphery of each nanodisk,” Song explains. “This greatly enhances the light field inside the centre of the hole and induces an effective dipole moment there, which is what produces a geometric phase change to the light emission at each pixel.”
By rotating the holes in the nanodisks, Song says that it is possible to introduce specific geometric phase profiles into the metasurface. The laser emission can then be tailored to create focal spots, focal lines and doughnut shapes as well as holographic images.
And that is not all. Unlike in conventional laser modes, the waves scattered from the new metalaser are too weak to undergo resonant amplification. This means that the speckle noise generated is negligibly small, which resolves the longstanding challenge of reducing speckle noise in holographic displays without reducing image quality.
According to Song, this property could revolutionize laser displays. He adds that the physical concept outlined in the team’s work could be extended to other nanophotonic devices, substantially improving their performance in various optics and photonics applications.
“Controlling laser emission at will has always been a dream of laser researchers,” he tells Physics World. “Researchers have traditionally done this by introducing metasurfaces into structures such as laser oscillators. This approach, while very straightforward, is severely limited by the resonant conditions of this type of laser system. With other types of laser, they had to either integrate a metasurface wave plate outside the laser cavity or use bulky and complicated components to compensate for phase changes.”
With the new metalaser, the laser emission can be changed from fixed profiles such as Hermite-Gaussian modes and Laguerre-Gaussian modes to arbitrarily customized beams, he says. One consequence of this is that the lasers could be fabricated to match the numerical aperture of fibres or waveguides, potentially boosting the performance of optical communications and optical information processing.
Developing a programmable metalaser will be the researchers’ next goal, Song says.
A free-electron laser (FEL) that is driven by a plasma-based electron accelerator has been unveiled by Sam Barber at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and colleagues. The device is a promising step towards compact, affordable free-electron lasers that are capable of producing intense, ultra-short X-ray laser pulses. It was developed in collaboration with researchers at Berkeley Lab, University of California Berkeley, University of Hamburg and Tau Systems.
A FEL creates X-rays by the rapid back-and-forth acceleration of fast-moving electron pulses using a series of magnets called an undulator. These X-rays are emitted at a narrow wavelength and then interact with the pulse as it travels down the undulator. The result is a bright X-ray pulse with laser-like coherence.
What is more, wavelength of the emitted X-rays can be adjusted simply by changing the energy of the electron pulses, making FELs highly tuneable.
Big and expensive
FELs are especially useful for generating intense, ultra-short X-ray pulses, which cannot be produced using conventional laser systems. So far, several X-ray FELs have been built for this purpose – but each of them relies on kilometre-scale electron accelerators costing huge amounts of money to build and maintain.
To create cheaper and more accessible FELs, researchers are exploring the use of laser-plasma accelerators (LPAs) – which can accelerate electron pulses to high energies over distances of just a few centimetres.
Yet as Barber explains, “LPAs have had a reputation for being notoriously hard to use for FELs because of things like parameter jitter and the large energy spread of the electron beam compared to conventional accelerators. But sustained research across the international landscape continues to drive improvements in all aspects of LPA performance.”
Recently, important progress was made by a group at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), who used an LPA to create FEL pulses by a factor of 50. Their pulses have a wavelength of 27 nm – which is close to the X-ray regime – but only about 10% of pulses succeeded.
Very stable laser
Now, the team has built on this by making several improvements to the FEL setup, with the aim to enhance its compatibility with LPAs. “On our end, we have taken great pains to ensure a very stable laser with several active feedback systems,” Barber explains. “Our strategy has essentially been to follow the playbook established by the original FEL research: start at longer wavelengths where it is easier to optimize and learn about the process and then scale the system to the shorter wavelengths.”
With these refinements, the team amplified their FEL’s output by a factor of 1000, achieving this in over 90% of their shots. This vastly outperformed the CAS result – albeit at a longer wavelength. “We designed the experiment to operate the FEL at around 420 nm, which is not a particularly exciting wavelength for scientific use cases – it’s just blue light,” Barber says. “But, with very minor upgrades, we plan to scale it for sub-100 nm wavelength where scientific applications become interesting.”
The researchers are optimistic that further breakthroughs are within reach, which could improve the prospects for LPA-driven FEL experiments. One especially important target is reaching the “saturation level” at X-ray wavelengths: the point beyond which FEL amplification no longer increases significantly.
“Another really crucial component is developing laser technology to scale the current laser systems to much higher repetition rates,” Barber says. “Right now, the typical laser used for LPAs can operate at around 10 Hz, but that will need to scale up dramatically to compare to the performance of existing light sources that are pushing megahertz.”
The most common form of water in the universe appears to be much more complex than was previously thought. While past measurements suggested that this “space ice” is amorphous, researchers in the UK have now discovered that it contains crystals. The result poses a challenge to current models of ice formation and could alter our understanding of ordinary liquid water.
Unlike most other materials, water is denser as a liquid than it is as a solid. It also expands rather than contracts when it cools; becomes less viscous when compressed; and exists in many physical states, including at least 20 polymorphs of ice.
One of these polymorphs is commonly known as space ice. Found in the bulk matter in comets, on icy moons and in the dense molecular clouds where stars and planets form, it is less dense than liquid water (0.94 g cm−3 rather than 1 g cm−3), and X-ray diffraction images indicate that it is an amorphous solid. These two properties give it its formal name: low-density amorphous ice, or LDA.
While space ice was discovered almost a century ago, Michael Davies, who studied LDA as part of his PhD research at University College London and the University of Cambridge, notes that its exact atomic structure is still being debated. “It is unclear, for example, whether LDA is a ‘true glassy state’ (meaning a frozen liquid with no ordered structure) or a high disordered crystal,” Davies explains.
The memory of ice
In the new work, Davies and colleagues used two separate computational simulations to better understand this atomic structure. In the first simulation, they froze “boxes” of water molecules by cooling them to -150 °C at different rates, which produced crystalline and amorphous ice in varying proportions. They then compared this spectrum of structures to the structure of amorphous ice as measured by X-ray diffraction.
“The best model to match experiments was a ‘goldilocks’ scenario – that is, one that is not too amorphous and not too crystalline,” Davies explains. “Specifically, we found ice that was up to 20% crystalline and 80% amorphous, with the structure containing tiny crystals around 3-nm wide.”
The second simulation began with large “boxes” of ice consisting of many small ice crystals packed together. “Here, we varied the number of crystals in the boxes to again give a range of very crystalline to amorphous models,” Davies says. “We found very close agreement to experiment with models that had very similar structures compared to the first approach with 25% crystalline ice.”
To back up these findings, the UCL/Cambridge researchers performed a series of experiments. “By re-crystallizing different samples of LDA formed via different ‘parent ice phases’ we found that the final crystal structure formed varied depending on the pathway to creation,” Davies tells Physics World. In other words, he adds, “The final structure had a memory of its parent.”
This is important, Davies continues, because if LDA was truly amorphous and contained no crystalline grains at all, this “memory” effect would not be possible.
Impact on our understanding
The discovery that LDA is not completely amorphous has implications for our understanding of ordinary liquid water. The prevailing “two state” model for water is appealing because it accounts for many of water’s thermodynamic anomalies. However, it rests on the assumption that both LDA and high-density amorphous ice have corresponding liquid forms, and that liquid water can be modelled as a mixture of the two.
“Our finding that LDA actually contains many small crystallites presents some challenges to this model,” Davies says. “It is thus of paramount importance for us to now confirm if a truly amorphous version of LDA is achievable in experiments.”
The existence of structure within LDA also has implications for “panspermia” theory, which hypothesizes that the building blocks of life (such as simple amino acids) were carried to Earth within an icy comet. “Our findings suggest that LDA would be a less efficient transporting material for these organic molecules because a partly crystalline structure has less space in which these ingredients could become embedded,” Davies says.
“The theory could still hold true, though,” he adds, “as there are amorphous regions in the ice where such molecules could be trapped and stored.”
Challenges in determining atomic structure
The study, which is detailed in Physical Review B, highlights the difficulty of determining the exact atomic structure of materials. According to Davies, it could therefore be important for understanding other amorphous materials, including some that are widely used in technologies such as OLEDs and fibre optics.
“Our methodology could be applied to these materials to determining whether they are truly glassy,” he says. “Indeed, glass fibres that transport data along long distances need to be amorphous to function efficiently. If they are found to contain tiny crystals, these could then be removed to improve performance.”
The researchers are now focusing on understanding the structure of other amorphous ices, including high-density amorphous ice. “There is much for us to investigate with regards to the links between amorphous ice phases and liquid water,” Davies concludes.
This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features an interview with Kirsty McGhee, who is a scientific writer at the quantum-software company Qruise. It is the second episode in our two-part miniseries on careers for physicists.
While she was doing a PhD in condensed matter physics, McGhee joined Physics World’s Student Contributors Network. This involved writing articles about peer-reviewed research and also proof reading articles written by other contributors.
McGhee explains how the network broadened her knowledge of physics and improved her communication skills. She also says that potential employers looked favourably on her writing experience.
At Qruise, McGhee has a range of responsibilities that include writing documentation, marketing, website design, and attending conference exhibitions. She explains how her background in physics prepared her for these tasks, and what new skills she is learning.
An experiment that scattered high-energy electrons from helium-3 and tritium nuclei has provided the first evidence for three-nucleon short-range correlations. The data were taken in 2018 at Jefferson Lab in the US and further studies of these correlations could improve our understanding of both atomic nuclei and neutron stars.
Atomic nuclei contain nucleons (protons and neutrons) that are bound together by the strong force. These nucleons are not static and they can move rapidly about the nucleus. While nucleons can move independently, they can also move as correlated pairs, trios and larger groupings. Studying this correlated motion can provide important insights into interactions between nucleons – interactions that define the structures of tiny nuclei and huge neutron stars.
The momenta of nucleons can be measured by scattering a beam of high-energy electrons from nuclei. This is because the de Broglie wavelength of these electrons is smaller that the size of the nucleons – allowing individual nucleons to be isolated. During the scattering process, momentum is exchanged between a nucleon and an electron, and how this occurs provides important insights into the correlations between nucleons.
Electron scattering has already revealed that most of the momentum in nuclei is associated with single nucleons, with some also assigned to correlated pairs. These experiments also suggested that nuclei have additional momenta that had not been accounted for.
Small but important
“We know that the three-nucleon interaction is important in the description of nuclear properties, even though it’s a very small contribution,” explains John Arrington at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US. “Until now, there’s never really been any indication that we’d observed them at all. This work provides a first glimpse at them.”
In 2018, Arrington and others did a series of electron-scattering experiments at Jefferson Lab with helium-3 and tritium targets. Now Arrington and an international team of physicists has scoured this scattering data for evidence of short-range, three-nucleon correlations.
Studying these correlations in nuclei with just three nucleons is advantageous because there are no correlations between four or more nucleons. These correlations would make it more difficult to isolate three-nucleon effects in the scattering data.
A further benefit of looking at tritium and helium-3 is that they are “mirror nuclei”. Tritium comprises one proton and two neutrons, while helium-3 comprises two protons and a neutron. The strong force that binds nucleons together acts equally on protons and neutrons. However, there are subtle differences in how protons and neutrons interact with each other – and these differences can be studied by comparing tritium and helium-3 electron scattering experiments.
A clean picture
“We’re trying to show that it’s possible to study three-nucleon correlations at Jefferson Lab even though we can’t get the energies necessary to do these studies in heavy nuclei,” says principle investigator Shujie Li, at Lawrence Berkeley. “These light systems give us a clean picture — that’s the reason we put in the effort of getting a radioactive target material.”
Both helium-3 and tritium are rare isotopes of their respective elements. Helium-3 is produced from the radioactive decay of tritium, which itself is produced in nuclear reactors. Tritium is a difficult isotope to work with because it is used to make nuclear weapons; has a half–life of about 12 years; and is toxic when ingested or inhaled. To succeed, the team had to create a special cryogenic chamber to contain their target of tritium gas.
Analysis of the scattering experiments revealed tantalizing hints of three-nucleon short-range correlations. Further investigation is need to determine exactly how the correlations occur. Three nucleons could become correlated simultaneously, for example, or an existing correlated pair could become correlated to a third nucleon.
Three-nucleon interactions are believed to play an important role in the properties of neutron stars, so further investigation into some of the smallest of nuclei could shed light on the inner workings of much more massive objects. “It’s much easier to study a three-nucleon correlation in the lab than in a neutron star,” says Arrington.
What does a history of women in science accomplish? This volume firmly establishes that women have for a long time made substantial contributions to quantum physics. It raises the profiles of figures like Chien-Shiung Wu, whose early work on photon entanglement is often overshadowed by her later fame in nuclear physics; and Grete Hermann, whose critiques of John von Neumann and Werner Heisenberg make her central to early quantum theory.
But in specifically recounting the work of these women in quantum, do we risk reproducing the same logic of exclusion that once kept them out – confining women to a specialized narrative? The answer is no, and this book is an especially compelling illustration of why.
A reference and a reminder
Two big ways this volume demonstrates its necessity are by its success as a reference, a place to look for the accomplishments and contributions of women in quantum physics; and as a reminder that we still have far to go before there is anything like true diversity, equality or the disappearance of prejudice in science.
The subtitle Beyond Knabenphysik – meaning “boys’ physics” in German – points to one of the book’s central aims: to move past a vision of quantum physics as a purely male domain. Originally a nickname for quantum mechanics given because of the youth of its pioneers, Knabenphysik comes to be emblematic of the collaboration and mentorship that welcomed male physicists and consistently excluded women.
The exclusion was not only symbolic but material. Hendrika Johanna van Leeuwen, who co-developed a key theorem in classical magnetism, was left out of the camaraderie and recognition extended to her male colleagues. Similarly, credit for Laura Chalk’s research into the Stark effect – an early confirmation of Schrödinger’s wave equation – was under-acknowledged in favour of that of her male collaborator’s.
Something this book does especially well is combine the sometimes conflicting aims of history of science and biography. We learn not only about the trajectories of these women’s careers, but also about the scientific developments they were a part of. The chapter on Hertha Sponer, for instance, traces both her personal journey and her pioneering role in quantum spectroscopy. The piece on Freda Friedman Salzman situates her theoretical contributions within the professional and social networks that both enabled and constrained her. In so doing, the book treats each of these women as not only whole human beings, but also integral players in a complex history of one of the most successful and debated physical theories in history.
Lost physics
Because the history is told chronologically, we trace quantum physics from some of the early astronomical images suggesting discrete quantized elements to later developments in quantum electrodynamics. Along the way, we encounter women like Maria McEachern, who revisits Williamina Fleming’s spectral work; Maria Lluïsa Canut, whose career spanned crystallography and feminist activism; and Sonja Ashauer, a Brazilian physicist whose PhD at Cambridge placed her at the heart of theoretical developments but whose story remains little known.
This history could lead to a broader reflection on how credit, networking and even theorizing are accomplished in physics. Who knows how many discoveries in quantum physics, and science more broadly, could have been made more quickly or easily without the barriers and prejudice women and other marginalized persons faced then and still face today? Or what discoveries still lie latent?
Not all the women profiled here found lasting professional homes in physics. Some faced barriers of racism as well as gender discrimination, like Carolyn Parker who worked on the Manhattan Project’s polonium research and is recognized as the first African American woman to have earned a postgraduate degree in physics. She died young without having received full recognition in her lifetime. Others – like Elizabeth Monroe Boggs who performed work in quantum chemistry – turned to policy work after early research careers. Their paths reflect both the barriers they faced and the broader range of contributions they made.
Calculate, don’t think
The book makes a compelling argument that the heroic narrative of science doesn’t just undermine the contributions of women, but of the less prestigious more broadly. Placing these stories side by side yields something greater than the sum of its parts. It challenges the idea that physics is the work of lone geniuses by revealing the collective infrastructures of knowledge-making, much of which has historically relied not only on women’s labour – and did they labour – but on their intellectual rigour and originality.
Many of the women highlighted were at times employed “to calculate, not to think” as “computers”, or worked as teachers, analysts or managers. They were often kept from more visible positions even when they were recognized by colleagues for their expertise. Katharine Way, for instance, was praised by peers and made vital contributions to nuclear data, yet was rarely credited with the same prominence as her male collaborators. It shows clearly that those employed to support from behind the scenes could and did contribute to theoretical physics in foundational ways.
The book also critiques the idea of a “leaky pipeline”, showing that this metaphor oversimplifies. It minimizes how educational and institutional investments in women often translate into contributions both inside and outside formal science. Ana María Cetto Kramis, for example, who played a foundational role in stochastic electrodynamics, combined research with science diplomacy and advocacy.
Should women’s accomplishments be recognized in relation to other women’s, or should they be integrated into a broader historiography? The answer is both. We need inclusive histories that acknowledge all contributors, and specialized works like this one that repair the record and show what emerges specifically and significantly from women’s experiences in science. Quantum physics is a unique field, and women played a crucial and distinctive role in its formation. This recognition offers an indispensable lesson: in physics and in life it’s sometimes easy to miss what’s right in front of us, no less so in the history of women in quantum physics.
Tau leptons are fundamental particles in the lepton family, similar to electrons and muons, but with unique properties that make them particularly challenging to study. Like other leptons, they have a half-integer spin, but they are significantly heavier and have extremely short lifetimes, decaying rapidly into other particles. These characteristics limit opportunities for direct observation and detailed analysis.
The Standard Model of particle physics describes the fundamental particles and forces, along with the mathematical framework that governs their interactions. According to quantum electrodynamics (QED), a component of the Standard Model, protons in high-energy environments can emit photons (γ), which can then fuse to create a pair of tau leptons (ττ⁻): γ γ → ττ
Using QED equations, scientists have previously calculated the probability of this process, how the tau leptons would be produced, and how often it should occur at specific energies. While muons have been extensively studied in proton collisions, tau leptons have remained more elusive due to their short lifetimes.
In a major breakthrough, researchers at CERN have used data from the CMS detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to make the first measurement of tau lepton pair production via photon-photon fusion in proton-proton collisions. Previously, this phenomenon had only been observed in lead-ion (PbPb) collisions by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations. In those cases, the photons were generated by the strong electromagnetic fields of the heavy nuclei, within a highly complex environment filled with many particles and background noise. In contrast, proton-proton collisions are much cleaner but also much rarer, making the detection of photon-induced tau production a greater technical challenge.
Notably, the team were able to distinguish QED photon collisions from QCD (Quantum Chromodynamics) collisions by the lack of the underlying event. They demonstrated tau particles were being produced without other nearby tracks (paths left by particles) using the excellent vertex resolution of their pixel detector. To verify the technique, the researchers did careful studies of the same processes in muon pair production and developed corrections to apply to the tau lepton processes.
Demonstrating tau pair production in proton-proton collisions not only confirms theoretical predictions but also opens a new avenue for studying tau leptons in high-energy environments. This breakthrough enhances our understanding of lepton interactions and provides a valuable tool for testing the Standard Model with greater precision.
Understanding the behaviour of atoms and molecules at the quantum level is crucial for advances in chemistry, physics, and materials science. However, simulating these systems is extremely complex.
Traditional methods rely on mathematical functions that must be smooth and differentiable. This limits the types of models that can be used—especially modern machine learning models.
In order to remove this requirement, a team of researchers from Tel Aviv University have developed a new approach by combining a stochastic representation of many-body wavefunctions with path integrals.
Their work opens the door to using more flexible and powerful machine learning architectures, such as diffusion models and piecewise transformers.
They demonstrated their method on a simplified model of interacting particles in a 2D harmonic trap. They were able to show that it can accurately capture complex quantum behaviours, including symmetry breaking and the formation of Wigner molecules (a type of ordered quantum state).
The approach is computationally efficient and scales better with system size than traditional methods.
Most importantly though, this work allows for more accessible and scalable quantum simulations using modern AI techniques, potentially transforming how scientists study quantum systems.
Studying physics can be so busy and stressful that deciding what you should do after graduating is probably the last thing on any student’s mind. Here to help you work out what to do next are four careers experts, who took part in a Physics World Live panel discussion earlier this year. They all studied physics or engineering – and have thought long and hard about the career opportunities available for physics graduates.
The four experts are:
Crystal Bailey, director of programmes and inclusive practices at the American Physical Society (APS);
Tamara Clelford, a physics consultant working in aerospace and currently leading a review of the Chartered Physicist standard at the Institute of Physics, which publishes Physics World;
The career options for physicists are wide but can also seem overwhelming – so what advice do you have for people starting out on their career journey today?
Crystal Bailey: Finding a fulfilling career means trying to find something that matches your values. I don’t just mean what you’re interested in or what you like – but who you are as a person. So the first step always starts with self-assessment and self exploration, exploring what it is you really want from your life.
Do you want a job that has good work–life balance? Do you want something with a flexible schedule? Or do you want to make money? Making money is a very righteous and noble thing to want to do it – there’s nothing wrong with that. But when I give careers talks and ask the audience if they’ve asked themselves those questions, almost nobody raises their hand.
So I encourage you to reflect on a time when you’ve been really happy and fulfilled. I don’t just mean were you doing, say, a quantum-mechanics problem, but were you with other people? Were you alone? Were you doing something with your hands, building something? Or was it something theoretical? You need to understand what will be a good match for you.
After you’ve done that self-assessment and understand what you need, I advise you do “informational interviews”, which basically involves getting in touch with somebody – online or in person – to ask them what they do day-to-day. What advice do they have? Where’s their sector going?
You’ll get real insider knowledge and, more importantly, it’ll help you build your network – especially if you follow-up, say, every six months to thank them for advice and update them of your situation. It’ll keep that relationship fresh and serve you later when you’re actually looking for jobs in a more targeted way.
Tamara Clelford: You need to understand what it is you enjoy. Are you a leader or do you like to be managed? Do you prefer to be told what to do? Do you like working in a team or working alone? Are you theoretical or more experimental? Do you prefer research or the real world? Maybe you just want to work with, say, aeroplanes, which is a perfectly valid reason to do so.
You also need to ask yourself where you want to work. Do you want to work in a big company, a medium-sized firm, or a small start up? I began in a large defence company, where I could easily switch jobs if something wasn’t the right fit. But in a big firm you often get taken off work as priorities change, so I now work for myself, which is fabulous.
Araceli Venegas-Gomez: The hardest thing is finding out what you like. Your long-term goal might be to get rich or have your own company. Once you work that out, you’ll need a short-term plan. It’ll probably change but having a plan is a great start. Then ask yourself: are you good at it? That self-assessment – understanding your skills and talents – is really important.
Tushna Commissariat: My advice is don’t leave your job search until just before you graduate. Start looking at internships and summer jobs as early as you can. I recall interviewing one physicist who sent an e-mail to NASA and got an internship at the age of 15. But on the other hand, remember that even if you land your perfect job, it might not work out, and it’s always okay to change your mind.
Our expert panel
Sound advice From left to right: Crystal Bailey, Tamara Clelford, Araceli Venegas-Gomez and Tushna Commissariat. (Courtesy: APS, T Clelford, Qureca, IOP Publishing)
After getting interested in science at high school, Crystal Bailey majored in electrical engineering at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville but soon realized that “physics was the most beautiful thing ever” and did a PhD in nuclear physics at Indiana University in Bloomington. A chance encounter with someone who was in her Morris-dancing group led to Bailey working as career-programme manager at the American Physical Society, where she now serves as its director of programmes and inclusive practices.
Having declared aged five that she wanted to be a nuclear physicist, Tamara Clelford studied physics and astrophysics at the University of Sheffield in the UK. She has a PhD in antenna design and simulation from Queen Mary, University of London. After a year teaching physics in secondary schools, Clelford then spent a decade working as an antenna engineer in the defence industry. Following a short spell in a start-up, she now works as a freelance physics consultant in the aerospace sector.
Araceli Venegas-Gomez always wanted to work in science or technology and studied aerospace engineering at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, before getting a job at Airbus in Germany. However, she always had a passion for physics and in her spare time did a master’s in medical physics via distance learning. After taking an online course in quantum physics at the University of Maryland, Venegas-Gomez did a PhD in quantum simulation at the University of Strathclyde, UK. Her experience of business and academia led her to set up QURECA in 2019, which offers resources, careers advice and education to people who want to work in the burgeoning quantum sector.
Tushna Commissariat grew up in Mumbai, India, where gazing up at the few stars she could make out in the big-city skies inspired her to study science. While doing a bachelor’s degree in physics at Xavier’s College, she did a summer astrophysics placement in Pune, where she quickly realized she wasn’t cut out for academia. Instead, Commissariat did a master’s in science journalism at City, University of London. After an internship at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, she joined Physics World in 2011, where she now works as careers and features editor.
What is the number one skill – over and above technical knowledge – that physicists have that will help them in their career?
Crystal Bailey: Physicists often go into well-paid jobs that have “engineering” in the title, working alongside other STEM graduates. In fact, physicists have many of the same scientific and technical skills that make engineers and computer scientists so attractive to employers. But what sets physicists apart is a confidence that they can teach themselves whatever they need to know to go to the next step.
It’s a kind of “intellectual fearlessness” that is part of being a physicist. You’re used to marching up to the edge of what is known about the universe and taking that next step over to discover new knowledge. You might not know the answer, but you know you can teach yourself how to find the answer – or find somebody who can help you get there.
Tamara Clelford: It might not help us narrow down where we want to work, but physicists are capable of solving a huge range of problems. We can root around a problem, look for its fundamental aspects, and use mathematical and experimental skills to solve it. Whether it’s a hardware problem, a software problem or the need to derive an equation, we can do all that.
As physicists, we have the ability to upskill, to improve and to solve whatever problem we want
Tamara Clelford
If we’re not an expert in a particular area, we know we can go and get the relevant expertise. As physicists, we know where our limits are. We’re not going to make stuff up to sound better than we are. We have the ability to upskill, to improve and to solve whatever problem we want.
Araceli Venegas-Gomez: As physicists, we have a multidisciplinarity that we often don’t realize we have. If you’re, say, a marine engineer, you’re going to work in marine engineering. But as a physicist, you can work anywhere there’s a job for you. What’s more, physicists don’t only solve problems; we also want to know why they exist. It might take us a bit longer to find a solution, but we look at it in a way that engineers might not.
Tushna Commissariat: One of the brilliant things about physicists is that they’re absolutely confident that they can come in and fix a problem. You see physicists going into biology and saying “Oh cancer, I can do that”. There are physicists who’ve gone into politics and into sport. I’ve even seen physicists improving nappies for babies.
At the same time, there’s almost a joy in failure: if something doesn’t work or goes wrong, it means something exciting and interesting is about to happen. I remember Rolf-Dieter Heuer, who was then director-general of CERN, saying it’ll be more exciting if we don’t find the Higgs boson because it would have meant the Standard Model of particle physics is broken – which would open up a wealth of possibilities.
What do you know today that you wish you’d known at the start of your career?
Crystal Bailey: When I went to grad school, I liked physics and thought “I’m good at it and I want to keep doing physics”. But I didn’t really having a clear reason for staying in academia. I was just doing what I thought was expected of me and didn’t even want a career in academia. So I wish I had had more of a sense of ownership and a little more confidence about my career.
Don’t doubt yourself. Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t do something
Crystal Bailey
The key message is: don’t doubt yourself. Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t do something. It’s your life – and what you want is the most important thing. I just wish I had been given a little more encouragement and a little more confidence to go in new directions.
Tamara Clelford: In life, your priorities change and it’s very difficult to project into the future. At any particular time, you have certain experience and knowledge, on which you make the best decision you can make. But if, in five or 10 years’ time, you realize things aren’t working, then change and do something else. Trust your instincts – and change when you need to change.
Araceli Venegas-Gomez: I wish I’d known at the start of my career that everything’s going to be okay and there’s no need to panic. If you’re doing a PhD and you don’t finish it, that’s fine – I don’t think I’ve ever met a single physicist who’s ended up jobless. There are millions of options so remind yourself that everything is going to be okay.
Tushna Commissariat: When you’re studying, it’s easy to feel you’re in a kind of bubble universe of exams, practicals or labs. Set backs can feel like the end of the world when they really aren’t: your marks on a particular test won’t determine your entire future. Remember that you gain so many useful skills while studying, whether it’s working with other people or doing outreach work, which might seem a waste of time but are great for your CV.
This article is based on the 9 April 2025 Physics World Live event, which you can watch on demand here.
