The difficulties faced by women in science come brilliantly to life in this hugely enjoyable book of cartoons by Jim Ottaviani. The strips include a fascinating account of Rosalind Franklin’s scandalously undervalued role in the determination of the structure of DNA. The story tells of her battle to be taken seriously as a scientist, and […]
Physics World is not in the habit of reviewing books by non-physicists, but when the author was married to one of the most famous physicists of the 20th century, we can make an exception. In this book, Jane Hawking – who was Stephen Hawking’s wife for 30 years – spills the beans on her life […]
It was a beautiful October afternoon in 1963 when Julian Barbour’s life changed forever. He was travelling by train with a student friend to climb the Watzmann in the Bavarian Alps when he started reading an article in Scientific American by Paul Dirac. The article questioned whether it was correct to unify the concepts of […]
“I am deeply moved by the offer from our State of Israel, and at once saddened and ashamed that I cannot accept it. All my life I have dealt with objective matters, hence I lack both the natural aptitude and the experience to deal properly with people and to exercise official functions. So wrote Albert […]
Every morning Caroline Davidson goes into her office in west London and rifles through her “slush pile”. Like all literary agents, she hopes that buried deep within the daily deluge of book proposals and manuscripts will be something so fantastic that no potential publisher would dare turn it down. “My dream is to open a […]
Genevieve Haddad is typical of many scientists. She did a degree, a PhD and a post-doc, but then realized she did not want to spend the next few years of her life “getting to know more and more about less and less”. She liked the intellectual thrill of research, but hated doing experiments, which she […]
“Physicists are doing very, very well, ” says Richard Brook, sitting in the chief executive’s office at the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. “We put more of our finance into physics departments than into any other. That’s an indication of the priority that we give to the subject.” His statements will come as a […]
Furious clashes on the nature of science have taken place recently between sociologists and scientists. Matin Durrani reports from the two sides' peace talks
Read article: Axis of universe debate rumbles on
A modern, media-fuelled controversy?
