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5th International conference on the History of Physics
Jun 1, 2025 · original
This week saw the 5 th international conference on the history of physics at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. The event, supported by the Institute of Physics, the European Physical Society and Portuguese Society of Physics, was the fifth in an o ngoing series of international conferences on the history of physics , a biennial series of meetings that aims to bring together professional historians and physicists with an interest in the history of their subject. This year’s conference was a great success, thanks to the indefatigable work of the organising committee chaired by Professor Isabel Malaquias of the University of Aveiro. You can find details of the organisation of the conference here As 2025 marks the centenary of an important year in the development in quantum mechanics – and has been declared International Year of Quantum Science and Technology by the United Nations – the t
4th International Conference on the History of Physics
Jun 11, 2022 · original
This week, the 4 th international conference on the history of physics finally took place at Trinity College Dublin. The event, supported by the Institute of Physics and the European Physics Society, was the fourth in an o ngoing series of international conferences on the history of physics , a biennial series of meetings that aims to bring together professional historians and physicists with an interest in the history of their subject. It was a great pleasure to attend this particular conference of the series, as it had been postponed many times due to the Covid virus. Because the meeting was initially expected to take place in 2020, close to the twin centenaries of Rutherford’s discovery of the proton as a fundamental constituent of the atom and the Eddington-Dyson eclipse experiment to measure the bending of light, it was decided that a major theme of the conference would be ‘On the r
End of semester and the beginning of a new era
May 3, 2022 · original
Friday marked the last teaching day of the semester at WIT and it also marked the last day of our college as an Institute of Technology. Today sees the first working day of the college as a constituent college of a new entity, the South East Technological University . There has been plenty of talk in the media about the wisdom (or not) of the upgrading of the Institutes of Technology in Ireland to the status of Technological Universities. I’m not sure I have anything to add to this, except to say that my understanding of the term Technological University is that it will allow the college to continue to offer Certificates and Diplomas in practical subjects, and courses in trades, as well as the undergraduate and postgraduate degrees of a traditional university. I should also say that, as a blown-in from Dublin, it is easy to understand the desire of citizens of Waterford and the region to
St Patrick’s Day in Austria
Mar 18, 2022 · original
I thought I’d take advantage of this year’s double-bank holiday for Patrick’s Day to get away from it all, so I’m back in Austria once again – this time in Bad Hofgastein , one of several beautiful small towns in the famous Gastein valley. It’s another great Austrian ski resort, plenty of variety with lovely pistes above and below the treeline and easy connections to the neighbouring resorts of Angelet and Bad Gastein. There seem to be far more skiers here from Austria and Germany than from the UK, always the sign of a local treasure. The weather has been fine most days and, more importantly, the snow cover is as good as one can expect in March. Lunch on St Patrick’s day – not a parade in sight! I had a great few days – my only complaint is that although the resort boasts quite a few ‘ski-touring ‘ routes, the off-piste skiing was in fact very challenging. This is because it hasn’t snowe
Mid-term in Tirol
Feb 17, 2022 · original
Now that the Covid threat appears to be receding, I took advantage of the mid-term break to take my first ski trip in quite a few years. I grabbed the last seat on a cheap ‘n cheerful package holiday to Niederau, a small village in Tirol. It’s been an excellent week, plenty of snow and good weather, yet not too many people on the slopes. Niederau is a pretty small resort anyway, but I suspect the ski season is pretty quiet this year because of travel hesistancy due to Covid. I’ve been in Niederau once before and it’s just as I remember it. Lots of nice runs, not too many people; lovely old fashioned hotel with a swimming pool that seems to be open 24 hours. I learnt to ski as a child, so I do a few hours work in the mornings while others are at ski school, and head out to the slopes in the afternoon. Hard to beat as a holiday! Had this run to myself all day, found it hard to leave
Why don’t third-level colleges postpone the second semester until February?
Jan 11, 2022 · original
Like many third-level colleges in Ireland, WIT is set to resume face-to-face teaching next week. Thus the college will begin the second semester of the academic year at a time when the Covid infection rate is running at over 20,000 a day, surely close to peak Omicron. To be sure, there is little question that online learning is a poor substitute for face-to-face teaching – but the obvious solution is to delay the second semester for a few weeks, rather than put the health of many thousands of staff and students at unnecessary risk. One wonders why colleges have not explored this option. It’s not as if postponing the onset of the second college semester would impose a great hardship on students. In many countries, a long break after the first semester exams is the norm in third level colleges. Indeed, I recall a great deal of talk about a long break in January when semesterization was fir
Last day of the hols
Jan 3, 2022 · original
Today marked the last day of our college Christmas break. I must say I quite enjoyed spending the break up here in Kilternan, Dublin, despite the scary onset of yet another variant of COVID-19. One welcome surprise was that a paper I had undertaken to write (for a NASA anthology on astronomical testing of Einstein’s theories) turned out to be very satisfying and took much less time to write than I expected. Sometimes procrastination is a good thing, I suspect my subconscious had been hard at work during the teaching semester! In any event, the article was pretty much all there once I sat down at the keyboard. Another welcome surprise was that the weather has been unusually mild for this time of year, allowing for plenty of tennis and even some surfing. Like many people, I haven’t been willing to take the risk of a ski holiday while Covid is still on the rampage and I really miss the snow
Response to Covid-19 and climate change: a remarkable divergence
Sep 30, 2021 · original
This article appeared in The Irish Times on 30th September 2021 As the year 2021 progressed, a remarkable divergence between the global response to the Covid-19 pandemic and to climate change became ever more apparent. Considering Covid-19 first, there is little question that the tide has turned in this war. The use of selective lockdowns, masking and social distancing measures followed by widespread vaccination dramatically slowed the spread of the disease. Indeed, these measures proved so successful in countries like Ireland that some commentators have taken to criticising the Government for being overly cautious in the measures it took to combat the disease. I don’t subscribe to this view. One reason is that an exponential rate of growth, left unchecked, can quickly become unstoppable. Another is the emergence of the Delta variant, which proved highly infectious among unvaccinated peo
Online International Conference on the History of Physics
Jun 5, 2021 · original
Yesterday, I participated in a virtual conference on the history of physics. The event, supported by the Institute of Physics and the European Physics Society, formed part of an ongoing series of international conferences on the history of physics , a biennial series of meetings that aims to bring together professional historians and physicists with an interest in the history of their subject. I have been involved with the organization of these conferences for some time now and it was great to see this year’s version, an online conference, go off without a hitch. There were many interesting talks spanning across several centuries of physics, such as: The Ghost of Galileo and the Spirit of Copenhagen (John Heilbron): To G or not to G : JH Poynting and the Gravitational Constant in the 19 th Century (Isobel Falconer): The Marie Curie Effect (Patricia Fara): Political Opportunism and Friend
A year of triumph for modern science
Dec 31, 2020 · original
This article of mine was pubished in The Irish Times on the last day of 2020. The year 2020 will probably be remembered as the year of the dreadful Covid-19 virus, but it should also be remembered as a year of significant triumph for modern science. While some had predicted that a vaccine for the virus might not be found for years, several successful vaccines were in fact developed within 12 months of the first emergence of the virus. In retrospect, the extraordinary speed of the development of a vaccine for Covid-19 can be attributed to a number of factors. The first was pressure – the devastating effects of the virus on human health and on social and economic activity gave rise to an urgent drive worldwide for a cure, with few limits on financial outlay. It seems there is much truth in the old adage that necessity is the mother of (scientific) invention. A second factor was that resear

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