Nobel prizes for computational science
Last year I wrote this column for Computing in Science & Engineering in which I predicted—correctly, as it turned out—that Martin Karplus would win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. By the time you...
View ArticleNobel predictions for 2013
Predicting who will be awarded a Nobel Prize is difficult—at least it has been for me. In the 16 years since I joined the editorial staff of Physics Today, I’ve guessed right just twice: The 1998...
View ArticleJames Bond in space
Ian Fleming’s third James Bond novel, Moonraker (1955), centers on a plot by Sir Hugo Drax, a British aerospace tycoon with a secret Nazi past, to bomb London with a missile armed with a Soviet nuclear...
View ArticleIn praise of flocking
Indian restaurants in 1970s Britain, especially those in the provinces, seemed to follow the same template. Menus were standardized around a few curries, among them mild creamy Korma, chili-red Rogan...
View ArticleThe progress of research
When I ran and wrote for Physics Today‘s Search and Discovery department, I’d often end news stories with a look toward the future. Such endings not only sound a note of hope and optimism, they also...
View ArticleRomance at the speed of light
The ability to travel between different universes or between different dimensions of the same universe is a common plot element in speculative fiction. Multiple worlds not only boost the variety of...
View ArticleThe case of the radioactive tuna
Earlier this week, a friend of mine posted a link on Facebook to a blog post entitled “Radioactive bluefin tuna caught off California coast.” As a keen consumer of sushi, she was alarmed. As a...
View ArticleRussia’s persecutions
The July 1997 issue of Physics Today included an obituary for historian of science Viktor Frenkel. The obituary was being finalized during my very first week on the magazine’s editorial staff. I read...
View ArticleLet’s go to Mars!
I started work at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in November 1990. Not counting the two years I spent as a postdoc, it was my first job, and it lasted seven years. Looking...
View ArticleBursts from the Cold War
In August 1963 three nuclear powers—the Soviet Union, the UK, and the US—signed the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. (France, which tested its first nuclear weapon in 1960, declined to sign; China’s...
View ArticleWhat did you calculate for fun?
I earned my bachelor’s in physics at Imperial College London. In my final year there, I took the last of the three courses on quantum mechanics. Tom Kibble, one of the fathers of the Higgs boson, was...
View ArticlePhysics at San Diego Comic-Con International III
Last week I was among the 140 000-strong throng that attended San Diego Comic-Con International, the annual celebration of superhero comics, science fiction movies, and other artistic renderings of...
View ArticleA Czech prime minister and a Welsh wizard
The New York Times recently reported on the resignation of Czech prime minister Petr Nečas amid a corruption scandal. Hints of a romantic affair between Nečas and his glamorous and imperious chief of...
View ArticleBrain circulation, not brain drain!
I spent 21 June at the 18th Science in Japan forum, which was held at the Cosmos Club in Washington, DC. The forum’s title was “Chemistry saves the Earth—toward sustainable society”; its topic,...
View ArticleKnowing me, knowing you: Networks of cooperation
As part of my job as Physics Today‘s online editor, I browse the arXiv e-print server in search of interesting papers to post to the magazine’s Facebook page. Among my most fruitful hunting grounds is...
View ArticleIn praise of egalitarianism
Last October Nature published a commentary by William Bynum, an emeritus professor of the history of medicine at University College London. The commentary was occasioned by the 50th anniversary of the...
View ArticleThe future of computational science—in 1977
In the spring of 1977, Queen Elizabeth II toured New Zealand to celebrate the 25th anniversary of her reign, astronomers using the Kuiper Airborne Observatory discovered the rings of Uranus, and—of...
View ArticleThe optimism and ambition of this year’s Gates scholars
I did my PhD at Cambridge University’s Institute of Astronomy. As a US-based alumnus of the university, I receive the quarterly newsletter Cambridge in America. Most of the newsletter is taken up with...
View ArticleScenes from Married Life: A novel by a physicist about a physicist
I’ve just finished reading two novels by William Cooper, the pen name of Harry Hoff. Born in Northern England in 1910, Cooper studied physics at Cambridge University, where his academic adviser was...
View ArticleThe celebrity physicist
My wife and I have just returned from a vacation in my native Britain, where we indulged, as usual, in one of our guilty pleasures: buying the celebrity magazine Hello. Unlike People, US Weekly, and...
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