The Nobel Prize in Physics 2017 awarded to LIGO collaboration

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics 2017 with one half to
Rainer Weiss, LIGO/VIRGO Collaboration and the other half jointly to
Barry C. Barish, LIGO/VIRGO Collaboration and
Kip S. Thorne, LIGO/VIRGO Collaboration
“for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves”

Norwegian Physicist Meeting

The Norwegian Physicist Meeting will be held in Tromsø, Norway, from 7-9 August 2017. It will be organised by the Norwegian Physical Society in collaboration with the Department of Physics and Technology at UiT, The Arctic University of Norway.

GENERA Gender in Physics days in Europe

In general, the physics research community fosters the assumption of being gender neutral. However, despite this, the under-representation of women in physics research is a long-standing and persistent issue. With this in mind, an international Consortium of Research Performing and Research Funding Organisations have engaged in the H2020 GENERA project which aims at continuing, monitoring and improving their Gender Equality Plans customised for the physics research community. The project started in September 2015 and is now half-way through its project life time.

Physics for Africa: an international workshop

The Physics Education Division is organising a workshop in conjunction with the Institute of Physics (IOP), London, at the forthcoming joint GIREP-EPEC-ICPE conference in Dublin (July 3-7, 2017, details available at http://www.girep2017.org/). The workshop will be led by the IOP, who have a long-standing interest in supporting physics education in Africa through their IOP for Africa programme.

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2016

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics 2016 with one half to David J. Thouless (University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA) and the other half to F. Duncan M. Haldane (Princeton University, NJ, USA) and J. Michael Kosterlitz (Brown University, Providence, RI, USA)

Editorial – the impact of BREXIT on physics from a UK perspective

On the evening of the 23 June 2016, I was at an Awards Dinner for the Royal Academy of Engineering, which is held each year to recognise excellence in engineering of all varieties. Talking to colleagues around the table that night, the majority were sure that the UK electorate would vote to remain in the EU. Although only one person I talked to admitted to having voted to leave, I was not convinced that this was going to be such an easy victory for the Remain Campaign. I had been worried for some time that many people from “my generation”, who had voted to join the European Community in the last referendum in 1975, were coming out in force to reverse that decision.

Editorial – Women in physics: challenging the established stereotypes?

An equitable gender balance in physics would be beneficial for the quality of research and education, which are key elements in the economic, social and cultural development of our Society. The under-representation of women in physics is very widely debated and is central for a Society caring about the well-being of its members.

Light for the 2014 Nobel Prizes in Physics and in Chemistry

The Nobel Committee has awarded this year two practical inventions, the blue Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) and the super-resolved fluorescence microscopy. Those are revolutionary and both use light to overcome technological barriers.
The 2014 Physics Nobel Prize goes to Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano from Japan, and to Shuji Nakamura from USA, “for the invention of efficient blue light emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources”. In the past producing bright visible light was routinely done by using semi-conductor diodes, to make…

Cedric Linder wins the 2014 ICPE Medal for Physics Education

The International Commission on Physics Education [ICPE] is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2014 ICPE Medal for outstanding contributions to physics education is Professor Cedric Linder of Uppsala University, Sweden.

The award recognizes Professor Linder’s outstanding contributions to physics education research. His work has been notable for its range, depth and impact, as well for its international scope. Educated at universities in South Africa, the USA and Canada, Cedric Linder, in 1996, was awarded the first personal Chair in Physics Education in South Africa …

SPIG 2014

The 27th Summer School and International Symposium on the Physics of Ionized Gases [SPIG 2014] will take place from 26-29 August 2014 in Beograd, Serbia.

SPIG 2014 is part of a series of events that began 50 years ago as an international conference in the fields of atomic collision processes, particle and laser beam interactions with solids, low temperature and general plasmas. It has become rare that such a wide range of topics is covered at a single conference. As these fields often overlap…

Featured in EPN

Most recent highlights from EPN…
- ‘In free fall’ by Herman C.W. Beijerinck
- 100 years of semiconductor science – The Ukrainian contribution by V.G. Lytovchenko and M.V. Strikha
- Confined to grow? – Publication dynamics and the proliferation of scientific journals by Istvan Daruka
- The atmospheres of extrasolar planets by Thérèse Encrenaz
- Chernobyl’s Legacy: Black Prophecies’ Bubble by Yehoshua Socol…

Editorial — Educating Upwards

I think that most of us would agree that physics research is poorly understood by politicians, and that we need to explain better what it is we do, and why. But while there may be consensus on the need for better communication, there is no universal agreement on how this should be achieved. And I have also heard frequently the same complaint that no matter how much effort we make, it seems to make no difference. There is little evidence that physics is actually appreciated at the political level.
I believe that the reason for this is simple. Namely, that we are not talking to the right people in the right way…