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Art and science meet in two new collaborations

An artist whose work draws on scientific imagery and mathematics held her debut exhibition, entitled Rough Science, in London during May. The art by Satdeep Grewal, who works in mixed media, paint and sculpture, was exhibited at the Brady Arts and Community Centre in Whitechapel. The IOP is also involved in a project to connect art and physics, called Superposition (p3).www.satdeepgrewal.com

Teenage author makes the case for physicsA-level student Beth Reeks, whose online novel was read by 19 million people, told Radio 4’s Saturday Live listeners that she wanted to study physics at university as it can lead to a wide range of careers. Beth, of Bassaleg School, Newport, has a deal to write three more novels. After the radio interview on 4 May the IOP asked her to write a post for its blog.http://iopblog.org

Physics in a flash

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June 2013

IOP urges rethink on spending

Unless the government pledges to increase science spending, ring-fence the science budget and find new money to back commercialisation of research, the UK is “in grave danger of losing its hard-earned position as an internation-ally leading knowledge base”, the IOP has said. It has also urged the govern-ment to put capital spending on a more secure footing and has warned that the UK could fail to attract and keep the most talented researchers if it does not make these commitments to science.

The IOP’s comments came in a submission on the forthcoming “mini” Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) that will determine the science budget for 2015–16. It was respond-ing to a call for stakeholders to enter into a dialogue on spending priorities by Prof. Sir John O’Reilly, director gen-eral, knowledge and innovation, at BIS.

Future settlementsIn its response, the IOP said: “We urge the government to make a long-term commitment to increased investment in UK science and innovation as a proven route to growth in the UK economy.” Inflation had eroded the previous flat-cash, ring-fenced settlement for sci-ence funding, it said. While the IOP was under no illusions that science funding could escape the pressure for austerity, continued flat cash would be “a clear threat to the survival of the UK science base as a world leader”, it said.

Such erosion had already substan-tially reduced the volume of research being funded, so that some world-leading areas of UK research were sig-nificantly underfunded, the IOP said. It called for a return to real-term growth, with the ring-fence being maintained for all future settlements and the funding within it being index-linked so that the research councils could plan ahead.

The Technology Strategy Board (TSB)

had been helping to maximise the part played by the research base in increas-ing economic growth, the IOP said, by supporting innovation in business and creating an environment to foster busi-ness investment in R&D and knowledge exchange with universities.

But although the TSB’s returns on some investments had been high (with as much as 700% being quoted), it was being asked to do more without increased funding, and some success-ful programmes, such as Knowledge Transfer Networks and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, were having to be reduced. To fulfil the government’s aims, “new money must be found to support the remarkable progress made to date by the TSB”, the response said.

The IOP acknowledged that sig-nificant amounts of capital funding for infrastructure had been made available recently. However, this was not equal to the amount that had been cut in the CSR of 2010, which applied to mainte-nance costs of facilities and university-based equipment as well as the costs

of construction and upgrades, it said. Even small cuts in the operating budg-ets of facilities such as the Diamond Light Source, ISIS and the Central Laser Facility could result in major reductions in their running time because of these facilities’ high baseline costs, it noted.

The IOP called for joined-up thinking here between the research councils. “As part of this, it is equally important that the user communities of each of the national facilities are consulted in order to have a full picture of the likely demands for beamtime access and to maximise the scientific output of each facility,” it said.

A healthy balance between curiosity-driven research, translating knowledge into useful products and prioritising research to address new challenges was needed, it said. The research coun-cils had been under pressure to meet shorter-term economic objectives, the IOP said, but it argued that they must keep the ability to set the UK’s long-term strategy for science and engineer-ing independently of government.

The IOP warned: “If investment in UK science and innovation contin-ues to stagnate or decrease, the best UK-based scientists may consider mov-ing abroad. There is also the distinct possibility that overseas students and researchers will no longer view the UK as a leading nation in scientific endeav-our and discovery.”

“Continued flat cash would be a threat to the survival of the UK science base as a world leader.”

The IOP has voiced major concerns about funding. Heather Pinnell reports.

The IOP says UK science could fall from its world-leading position if funding fails to improve.

Interactions June 2013

2 news

Time is real, the laws of physics can change and our universe could be involved in a cosmic natural selec-tion process in which new universes are born from black holes, renowned physicist and author Lee Smolin said in a talk at the Institute of Physics’ London office on 23 May.

His views are contrary to the widely-accepted model of the uni-verse in which time is an illusion and the laws of physics are fixed, as held by Einstein and many contemporary physicists, as well as some ancient philosophers, Prof. Smolin said.

Acknowledging that his state-ments were provocative, he explained how he had come to change his mind about the nature of reality and had moved away from the idea that the assumptions that

apply to observations in a laboratory can be extrapolated to the whole universe.

The debate had sometimes taken a metaphysical turn, he said, in

which the idea that time is not real had led some to conclude that every-thing that humans value – such as free will, imagination and agency – is also an illusion. “Is it any wonder that

so many people don’t buy science? This is what is at stake,” he said.

Referring to his earlier published work and that of others, he described how a black hole could spawn a new universe and how a kind of “natural selection” process could favour the emergence of universes with many black holes. This led to a model that made falsifiable predictions, such as an upper limit on the mass of a stable neutron star, he said.

Prof. Smolin’s talk drew on his new book, Time Reborn: from the crisis of physics to the future of the universe. He is a founding faculty member at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Toronto.

A clip of the talk is on the IOP’s YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/user/InstituteofPhysics.

Many state-funded schools lack enough equipment for standard practical work in science, according to research commissioned by a part-nership of organisations including the IOP. The research showed that spending on science varied hugely between schools, and many teachers were subsidising the budget for prac-tical science out of their own money.

In state secondary schools, spending on science per student var-ied between 75p and £31.25, with the average being £8.81, of which about £4 per head was spent on

consumables and equipment. A fifth of secondary schools and sixth-form colleges did not have the equipment to do simple experiments to measure forces and a quarter lacked enough equipment for students to work in pairs to build circuits. In around 70% of schools, staff had paid for items themselves and were not always reimbursed.

In primary schools, spending on practical science varied from 4p to £19.08 per head, with an average of £2.89. More than a third of primary school teachers were contributing to normal curricular spending with their own money. Feedback showed that there was a culture of tolerance and coping with the low level of resources available in primary schools, the

researchers found.The research was commissioned

from Pye Tait Consulting by Science Community Representing Education (SCORE), which includes the IOP. SCORE created benchmarks for acceptable levels of equipment, consumables, classroom facili-ties, and access to outside space. The researchers’ survey of teachers found that around 40% of second-ary schools had less than 70% of the equipment and consumables that they needed, while more than 70% of primary schools had less than 60% of the items needed.

The research also found that secondary-school technicians, partic-ularly physics specialists, are poorly paid and hard to replace, and nearly

a fifth of secondary schools reported inadequate laboratory facilities.

The chair of SCORE, Prof. Julia Buckingham, said: “Practical work is being limited by missing equipment and a lack of access to appropriate facilities.” She said, however, that schools had to share part of the responsibility for allocating funding for this important aspect of science learning.

SCORE consists of the IOP, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Society of Biology, the Association for Science Education and the Royal Society. The reports on primary and secondary practical science, and the benchmarks, are available by clicking “practical work in science” at www.score-education.org/policy.

Practical work hitby poor resources

Lee Smolin giving a talk organised by the IOP and attended by around 170 people.

Lee Smolin says time has a real future

Interactions June 2013

An essay on whether we should “sell” environmentally-friendly behaviour was the winning entry in the annual essay competition run by the IOP’s Environmental Physics Group (EPG).

Written by Sîan Williams, a PhD student at Imperial College London, it described how influencing behav-iour by spreading a message through existing social groups had been mooted as a better strategy than tra-ditional marketing campaigns.

The runners-up were Toby Harris, a Year 10 student at the Leys School, Cambridge, with his essay entitled

“Nuclear fusion: when will it come together?”; and Heidi Burdett, who has finished a PhD at the University of Glasgow and is to be a postdoc at the University of South Denmark. Her essay was on “The smell of the sea: sulphur production by marine algae”.

All three gave presentations at the EPG’s members’ day in London on 22 May. Other speakers were Arnaud Czaja of Imperial College London, Paul Messenger of the University of South Wales, and Sirinath Jamieson from Biosustainable Design. Guillaume Wright and Liz Kalaugher

from IOP Publishing also spoke, as did PhD students Angus Ferraro and Chris Ball.

Prizes of £100 each went to the runners-up, while Sîan Williams received a £200 prize.

Left to right: runners-up Heidi Burdett and Toby Harris, and winner Sîan Williams.

Environmental Physics Group rewards winning essayists

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An art installation will be placed in two Victorian underground ice wells below the London Canal Museum this summer as part of an artist-in-residence programme from the IOP. In May, Arts Council England announced that it is also contributing £10,000 to the programme, called Superposition, which enables visual artists and physicists to collaborate.

The installation is part of the out-come of a pilot project, for which the IOP commissioned particle physicist Ben Still and installation artist Lyndall Phelps to work together. The meet-ings and discussions between them form an important part of the project and are documented on a blog at www.physics.org/superposition.

Through their meetings, Phelps became inspired by particle phys-ics research and particularly the work being done at the Super-Kamiokande detector in Japan. The fact that detectors operate in subter-

ranean settings also inspired her, and gradually some ideas for the installation took shape.

The artwork will require almost 1.5 km of brass rods, 28,000 glass beads and 36,000 diamantes, as well as hundreds of acrylic disks. It will reflect the circular nature of detectors and incorporate the theme

of light as well as the intense labour required to create them.

Caitlin Watson, the IOP’s head of public engagement, said: “We’re delighted to be supporting this pro-ject because we want to highlight the beauty of physics to an artistic com-munity that is not often exposed to its elegance and allure.”

Prof. Sir Michael Pepper gave lec-tures on nanoelectronics in four Indian cities in April and May as part of an exchange scheme organised by the IOP and the Indian Physics Association.

Under the scheme, an eminent physicist from the UK or Ireland tours India every other year to give the Cockcroft–Walton Lectures, while in the alternate years an emi-

nent Indian physicist tours the UK and Ireland with the Homi Bhabha Visiting Lectures.

Prof. Pepper holds the Pender Chair in Nanoelectronics at University College London and the London Centre for Nanotechnology. He gave the lecture, entitled Semiconductor Nanoelectronics – The Engineering of Physics, at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, and the National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi.By Francesca Brand

Entrepreneur tells of useful IOP workshop

IOP helps art go underground

Interactions June 2013

News in Brief

One of two 30-feet in diameter brick ice wells that will house the new art installation.

IOP lecturer goes on tour of India

A South African entrepreneur who was helped in his spin-out endeav-ours by taking part in an IOP work-shop spoke at a similar event in Durban in May.

Abdul Mirza (pictured) is the chief executive officer of QZN Technology, which he describes as the commer-cial face of the Centre for Quantum Technology (CQT) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. In late 2009 the CQT asked him to develop a business plan for a company that it might form on the back of its research, which timed well with an IOP workshop on

entrepreneurial skills that was held by the IOP near Cape Town in November of that year. Mirza immed ia te l y app l ied the ski l ls learnt and networking

opportunities offered at the work-shop to the process of setting up the company.

At the event in May, Mirza spoke at a session on lessons from start-

ups and spin-offs, which was also addressed by Prof. Tony Bunn, director of the Innovation Centre at the South African Medical Research Council.

Other sessions were led by speak-ers who have addressed the IOP’s entrepreneurship workshops in a number of countries, as well as those with expertise in the business envi-ronment in South Africa.

There were also group projects and exercises as well as the chance to present a business pitch to all of the participants.

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Prof. Sir Michael Pepper toured India.

The European Commission and CERN will help with constructing the Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (SESAME). The commission has provided €3 m to the project through the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument and it will provide a further €5 m to enable CERN to supply SESAME with magnets for its main electron storage ring. The agreement was signed when SESAME’s council met at CERN in May. The council’s president and former director-general of CERN, Prof. Sir Christopher Llewellyn-Smith is pictured (above) on a site visit at CERN following the meeting.

First Minister for Scotland Alex Salmond paid a visit to the IOP’s Lab in a Lorry (LIAL) in April while the mobile laboratory was visiting the Meldrum Academy in Old Meldrum, which is in his Scottish Parliamentary Constituency. Salmond (pictured) praised the work that LIAL is doing with students aged 11–14. LIAL’s current tour of Scotland is partly funded by the Scottish government.

A new online service that aims to help academia and industry to connect has been launched on IOP Publishing’s physicsworld.com. Called Physics Connect, it aims to help anyone planning a scientific or engineering project by enabling them to source products, services and expertise from research institutes or commercial suppliers. The IOP’s director for membership and business, John Brindley, said: “We hope that Physics Connect will enhance knowledge exchange and create new partnerships and collaborations.” It can be accessed at http://connect.physicsworld.com.

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A fascination with space can moti-vate school students to sit up and take notice in their science lessons, so it’s fitting that Laura Thomas shares their enthusiasm. She’s the IOP’s schools and colleges lecturer this year, and she’s taking her inter-active talk, “Defying gravity: make physics your launchpad”, to 35 ven-ues around England, Scotland and Wales in 2013.

Interactions caught up with her halfway through her lecture tour.

“I’m really enjoying it. It’s interest-ing to go to so many different venues, and no two lectures are the same as there is a lot of interaction with the audience,” she says. “I talk about the history of space over the last 50 years and the physics required to get people into space. I talk about send-ing people to the International Space Station and I get them to think about rockets as projectiles.”

Her lecture includes demonstrat-ing Newton’s third law by riding a skateboard, firing off balloon rockets and asking the students to throw ten-nis balls at targets – first relying only on their own strength, then using a catapult. This helps to introduce the concept of the speed and momen-tum needed to successfully launch a rocket without it falling short or over-shooting its target.

Her own fascination with space began in her childhood in Scotland where, she says, she was fortunate to have a beautiful view of the night sky. She had plenty of questions for parents and friends, and later saw the space shuttle launched in Florida while on a family holiday.

This eventually led on to her going to the University of Edinburgh to do a five-year integrated master’s in astrophysics. Her first job on leav-ing in 2005 was as publishing edi-tor of Journal of Physics A for IOP Publishing, based in Bristol. “I was doing a lot of volunteering with the IOP’s South West Branch, doing outreach. I’d also done some out-reach and worked with schools as a student member of the Institute of Physics in Scotland committee,”

she says.While at university, Thomas leant

more towards science communica-tion than research but had not real-ised that it was a real career option. “Whereas today there are a lot more positions in science communica-tion, eight years ago it wasn’t like that. Science journalism didn’t par-ticularly interest me and I was more interested in working with schools.”

After a year in Bristol, she became an outreach manager at Queen Mary, University of London. There she was responsible for undergradu-ate recruitment to the maths and physics departments, a role that included organising an annual out-reach programme that had contact with 10,000 students, teachers and parents, producing marketing and careers materials, and speaking in schools on a variety of topics.

Last summer she left Queen Mary to become a self-employed science communicator. As well as visiting

a large number of schools to give talks, she’s also involved in continu-ing professional development for teachers and has addressed groups of parents and careers advisers. She also spoke before the Parliamentary Space Committee and is one of the space ambassadors for Scotland with the European Space Education Resource Office.

For the last four years she’s been the co-ordinator for the Cassini Scientist for a Day competition. This allows selected school students to choose a target area for the Cassini spacecraft to photograph, to make out a scientific case for it, and to con-trol the imaging for a short period.

With her clear ability to communi-cate with school students, has she ever considered going into teaching? “It’s a question I get asked quite reg-ularly, especially by schools needing some extra teachers. But I really like meeting lots of different people and having a supporting role,” she says.

“I’m really keen at the moment on supporting primary-school teachers in using space in their teaching. In Scotland, the curriculum is changing and it’s an opportunity to get more science and space into the primary curriculum. I’ve built up an expertise that can benefit teachers and I’m passionate about supporting them.”

Schools lecturer explores space

Interactions June 2013

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aphyHeather Pinnell meets

Laura Thomas, the IOP’s 2013 schools lecturer.

Laura Thomas is giving the Institute’s Schools and Colleges Lecture tour this year.

“No two lectures are the same as there’s a lot of audience interaction.”

Six IOP fellows were made fellows of the Royal Society in May. They are

Prof. Gerard Gilmore (left), professor of experimental philosophy at the University of Cambridge,

who leads efforts to understand the structure and origin of our galaxy; Prof. Nigel Glover (right), professor of physics at the University of Durham, who has made pivotal contributions to the understanding of data from all high-energy particle accelerators;

Prof. Raymond E Goldstein (left), Schlumberger professor of complex physical systems at the University of

Cambridge, who is an internationally recognised leader in biological physics and nonlinear dynamics; Prof. Joanna Haigh, professor of atmospheric physics and head of the physics department at Imperial College London (right), who is distinguished for her scientific leadership in solar influences on the middle atmosphere;

Prof. Julia Yeomans (left), professor of physics at the University of Oxford, who is distinguished for

her development of novel numerical and modelling tools to investigate a wide range of complex fluids; andProf. Robert Young (right), professor of polymer science and technology at the University of Manchester, whose research has transformed our understanding of the relationships between structure and mechanical properties in polymers and composites.

News in Brief

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5noticesEditor Heather Pinnell, Production Editor Alison Gardiner, Art Director Andrew Giaquinto. Institute of Physics, 76 Portland Place, London W1B 1NT, UK. Tel +44 (0)20 7470 4800; fax +44 (0)20 7470 4991; e-mail interactions@iop.org; web www.iop.org/interactions.

Prof. Roy Sambles is to be the IOP’s new president-elect. He was nomi-nated by the IOP’s Council and as there were no other nominations, he has been elected to serve as president-elect from 1 October 2013 to 30 September 2015, and as president from 1 October 2015 to 30 September 2017.

Prof. Roy Sambles has been pro-fessor of experimental physics at the University of Exeter since 1991, where he is academic lead of the electromagnetic and acoustic mate-rials research group. His current research focuses on the electromag-netic properties of metamaterials and his earlier research has included work on spin waves in the alkali metals, liquid-crystal optics and

plasmonics. He was elected a fel-low of the Royal Society in 2002 and received the IOP’s Thomas Young Medal in 2003 and its Faraday Medal in 2012. He also received the George Gray Medal of the British Liquid Crystal Society in 1998.

After taking his undergraduate degree and doctorate at Imperial College London, he was a research fellow at Imperial for two years before being appointed as a lec-turer in physics at Exeter in 1972. He became a senior lecturer there in 1985, a reader in 1988 and was

made professor in 1991. He has supervised more than 75 PhD stu-dents. He also holds more than 20 patents and his research has helped to underpin technological devel-opments at BAE, Qinetiq, Hewlett Packard and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory.

Prof. Sambles has been a mem-ber of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) since 2008, and has served on sev-eral EPSRC committees and panels.

He is a fellow of the IOP and a member of IOP Publishing’s Scientific Advisory Committee, and has served on the editorial boards of several journals, including Thin Solid Films, Journal of Modern Optics, Liquid Crystals and IOP Publishing’s Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, as well as on the editorial review board of the journal Science.

He has served on numerous other scientific committees and has been and continues to be actively involved in public outreach programmes.

...the honorary secretary

On 23 April I had the pleasure of hosting the Institute’s first ever legacy dinner as part of the Institute’s legacy drive. The

purpose was to inform our members who might be considering the inclusion of the Institute in their will.

The Institute’s president, Prof. Sir Peter Knight, and the chief executive, Prof. Paul Hardaker, talked about developments and projects at the IOP in which a bequest could make a real impact.

I, too, had the opportunity to talk about why I have chosen to remember the Institute in my will after, of course, taking care of my nearest and dearest. Some of those attending brought family members, and it was a most memorable occasion with much laughter.

The Institute is now offering a simple will-writing service, which the Institute will cover up to the value of £100. Melanie Blackburn (e-mail MelanieBlackburn@talbotslaw.co.uk), solicitor, who will manage this service, was also at hand to answer questions.

We are planning to set up a legacy society in 2014 for those who are remembering the IOP in their will, and I am delighted to be hosting another legacy event – a lunch on 10 October. It would be great to welcome you there.

To register for the lunch (places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis), or for a copy of a leaflet about leaving a legacy to the IOP, A Window of Opportunity: Your Legacy, please contact Angela Townsend, who manages the IOP’s fundraising administration, by e-mailing angela.townsend@iop.org.

If you would like to hear more about IOP projects that would be enhanced significantly by a bequest, please contact the Institute’s head of fundraising, Bernadette Benati, by e-mailing bernadette.benati@iop.org.

Prof. Stuart Palmer is the honorary secretary of the IOP.

Interactions June 2013

Letter from New president-elect is namedThe Institute has elected a new president-elect, who will be president from 2015.

The Institute has elected Prof. Stuart Palmer to serve for a further four-year period as honorary secretary. Prof. Palmer, who writes a Letter From in this issue about leaving a legacy to the IOP (left), will begin his next four-year term of office on 1 October 2013.

The IOP has also elected Mike Worboys to be its next vice-president (membership) and he will serve for a four-year period from 1 October 2013.

Both were nominated by the IOP’s Council and as there were no other nominations, a ballot for these posi-tions was unnecessary and each has been duly elected. Each will serve on the IOP’s Council for their four-year terms of office.

The IOP is currently conducting a ballot for three positions on Council as ordinary members. The ballot closes at 1.00 p.m. on 16 July and the result will be announced at the IOP’s annual general meeting on 18 July.

Mike Worboys is general manager of BAE Systems A d v a n c e d T e c h n o l o g y Centre (ATC) – a role that involves managing 300

scientists and engineers working at its Great Baddow, Filton and Towcester sites, at which he is responsible for all day-to-day operations.

He was BAE Systems head of advanced technology at the ATC from 2006–10 and for a year before that he was head of the ATC’s product assurance group. From 2001–04 he was general manager of the Towcester site and from 2000–01 was the capability insertion manager.

He began his career with the company as a research engineer in 1984, joining what was then the Marconi Research Centre at

Great Baddow to work on non-linear optics. Between 1988 and 2000 he held a number of management roles at the company.

Worboys has worked on a wide range of technologies including 2D and 3D optics, display systems, holographics, sensors, communica-tions and electronic interconnect and packaging. He studied at the University of Kent, where his first degree was in chemical physics and his PhD was on ionic conduction in polyether electrolytes.

He has filed a number of patents and has published more than 30 papers. He is a fellow of the Institute and was awarded the IOP’s Paterson Medal in 1996 for his work on a new display technology.

In 2003 he was invited to join the IOP panel that reviews appli-cations for fellowship and he was a member of the Institute’s Membership and Qualifications Board from 2008–12.

Vice-president (membership)Mike Worboys

Two officers of the IOP are elected

6 noticesNew FellowsPaula Chadwick, Khellil Sefiane.

New MeMbersJeppe Andersen, Tom Bell, Douglas Blackie, John Blakeney, Vinzenz Busch, Shirley Callow, Ho-Kei Chan, Richard Cobley, Paul Cook, William Dawe, Amit Desai, Georgios Dimitrakis, Elizabeth Duggan, Tanja Duric, James Fraser, Luis Garcia-Gancedo, Ian Glover, Ash Grant, Georgina Harris, Jonathan Hays, David Hazelton, Richard Hiles, Vincent Holdsworth, James Humphry, Adam Jackson, Gregory James, David Jess, Dawn Justice, Deepak Kar, Sidney Law, Rachel Lawless, Darren Lee, Gordon Mack, Simone Magni, Peter Mann, Richard Marsh, Saim Memon, Neophytos Messios, Eike Mueller, Jonathan Napier, Huanpo Ning, Craig O’Donnell, Alexander Penson, David Philbey, Christie Pommier, Allan Reid, Louisa Reynolds, James Richley, Che Seabourne, Maxim Shcherbina, Grainne Sheerin, Chris Sinclair, Clint Smallman, Duncan Smith, Jennifer Stone, Rosemary Telford, Jeremy Thomas, Richard Tuley, Alisdair Wallis, David Woods, Mark Yonge.

IN MeMorIaMAlan S Axelrod, Katharine Anne Giles (London, WC1), Leslie Martin Haddow, Brian Harry Hampson, John Clement Henderson (Woodbridge), Alex Montwill.

aNNouNceMeNtsl The Institute is running a number of free workshops on applying for IOP chartered status. The two-hour sessions, which are open to IOP members only, are being held at venues around the UK and Ireland, including a workshop in Reading in June. They cover topics including the benefits of chartership, the differences between CPhys and CEng, and tips for making a successful application. Places are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. For further details, including a list of dates and venues, visit the IOP’s website at www.iop.org and click on “Join the IOP” and “professional designations”, or e-mail cpd@iop.org.l The rail industry’s Enabling Innovation Team is offering a prize of £1 m in a competition to find the most innovative solutions that will have the most impact for passenger and freight customers. It is seeking

proposals from both the rail and non-rail sectors. The EIT Customer Experience competition opened on 13 May and closes on 14 July. Final judging will be at an awards event in September. For further details, visit www.futurerailway.org/customers.l The British Vacuum Council (BVC) is inviting nominations for its two annual prizes: the BVC Senior Prize and John Yarwood Memorial Medal, for established researchers, and the C R Burch Prize and BVC Medal, for early-career researchers.

The awards are made for distinguished contributions to scientific research from a scientist in the UK or Ireland in the fields of vacuum science, surface science, thin films or any related topic in which vacuum science and engineering play an important role. The prizes for 2013 have been awarded (see Member News).

For the BVC prizes for 2014, nominations are invited as of 1 September 2013 and must be submitted by 31 January 2014. Visit the British Vacuum Council website at http://connect.physicsworld.com/british-vacuum-council/414873.supplier for further details and

nomination forms. Nominations must be made by a member of one of the BVC’s consitutent bodies or by self-nomination of such a member. l The IOP’s annual general meeting will be held on 18 July at 12.30 p.m. at IOP Publishing, Temple Circus, Temple Way, Bristol BS1 6HG. All corporate members of the IOP are entitled to attend and vote. For further information, e-mail agm@iop.org.

MeMber Newsl The British Vacuum Council (BVC) has awarded its 2013 Senior Prize and John Yarwood Memorial Medal to IOP fellow Prof. Richard Palmer, of the University of Birmingham, and it has awarded the C R Burch Prize and BVC Medal for 2013 to IOP member Philip King, a postdoctoral research fellow at Cornell University, in the US.l IOP member Mohammed A Karim has been appointed provost and executive vice-chancellor for academic and student affairs at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in the US. He is currently vice-president for research at Old Dominion University, Virginia, and will take up his new post in July.

Graduating this year? Don’t forget to regrade your IOP

membership!

Just log in and choose from three options:• Associate member – for early

career physicists (including postgraduate students).

• IOPimember – this digital membership is perfect for anyone with an interest in physics.

• Still an undergraduate? – if you are continuing your undergraduate studies please let us know so we can extend your free membership.

Regrading is easy!All you need to do is go to www.myiop.org, log in and then follow the instructions.

Unless we hear from you by 30 September 2013 your current student membership will expire in October 2013.

Research Student Conference FundThe fund provides financial support to

research-student members to attend international conferences and major national meetings.

Apply for up to £250 during the course of your PhD.

Applications are considered on a quarterly basis and should reach the Institute by 1 March, 1 June, 1 September or 1 December.

For further information, visit www.iop.org or e-mail supportandgrants@iop.org.

Interactions June 2013

antimatters

Performers put on a party for Feynman

As one of the participants in the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb, the pioneer of quan-tum electrodynamics and a principal investigator on the Challenger shuttle accident, Richard Feynman should be just as big a household name as Hawking or Einstein.

Far from penetrating the popular consciousness, however, Feynman is a hero figure only to those with a prior interest in physics. They were out in force at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre on 11 May – which would have been Feynman’s 95th birthday – for a vari-ety show, hosted by the comedian and writer Robin Ince, celebrating Feynman’s physics career, his bongo-playing and his life-drawing.

Happy Birthday Mr Feynman included a range of music, from a borderline-surreal comedic number from Helen Arney based on the idea of being cryogenically frozen, to a

hauntingly beautiful folksy song from Grace Petrie based on a letter written by Feynman to his wife Arline after her death and sealed until his own, and a nod to the principle of scientific exper-imentation with the house jazz quintet playing the same tune variously back-wards, in different keys, silently and after having swapped instruments.

The physics itself was dealt with lightheartedly as well as seri-ously. Richard Vranch, as “Dr Hula”, explained energy levels in atoms with the assistance of – you guessed it – hula hoops; Arney’s Festival of the Spoken Nerd colleague Matt Parker demonstrated logic gates using a large layout of dominoes, and Tom Whyntie and Andrew Pontzen worked a discussion of Feynman’s explana-tion of the principle of least action into a routine that Ince described as being like a nerdier Little and Large.

More straight-facedly, science writer Marcus Chown regaled the audience with anecdotes of the man himself, having studied under him at the California Institute of Technology. Particle physicist Jon Butterworth

explained the relationship between the Feynman diagrams of quantum physics and the “bumps” in CERN data that are indicative of the produc-tion of the Higgs boson.

Climate-scientist Tamsin Edwards went over the parallels between Feynman’s life and career and her own – particle physics, niche Brazilian samba instruments and a penchant for drawing bottoms. Solar physicist Lucie Green explained the aurora borealis, which Feynman was forbidden from researching by his sister, astrophysi-cist Joan Feynman, who spent most of her career studying the solar wind and Earth’s magnetosphere.

As is often the case with variety shows, you can please some of the people all of the time or all of the peo-ple some of the time, and the lurch from comedy routine to serious scien-tific discussion was occasionally jar-ring. But, on the whole, that doesn’t detract from a fun evening celebrating a great scientist.

Chris White is the Institute’s policy communications officer.

Chris White went to a show to celebrate the late Richard Feynman.

“Richard Vranch explained energy levels in atoms with the assistance of hula hoops.”

Richard Feynman relaxing in his office.

Interactions June 2013

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