Jim's Blog
Judging a book by its cover
Firstly, a quick recap: After three and a bit years in the writing, my new book on the scientific achievements during the golden age of the medieval Islamic empire is almost finished. It heads off to printers next week, to be in all good bookshops on 30 September! Hurrah.
It also now has the new title as shown on the left. This might not have been everyone’s first choice title, but there was a rationale for doing it – one that I concede is sensible and actually necessary.
Quantum biology
There are many distinct sub-fields of scientific research around the world that make use of the strange quantum rules to describe our universe, from condensed matter to molecular physics to atomic physics to nuclear physics to particle physics; then there is quantum chemistry, quantum optics, nanotechnology. quantum information, quantum cosmology. quantum gravity; the list goes on. Well, add to this the exciting new area of quantum biology. Continue reading
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Don’t Cut my Research Programme, Cut Theirs!
Nuclear physicists in particular seem to have been singled out disproportionately with these government cuts. Two of their three currently funded national research projects have been killed off along with all seven of proposed future projects. This represents a massive 52% cut. To have this at a time when the UK is discussing a new nuclear power programme and addressing nuclear waste issues is mind bogglingly short sighted.
The Lucasian chair
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton once famously said “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”. He was rightly pointing out that none of the great minds in history achieved what they did in isolation – no one starts from scratch. But true geniuses such as Isaac Newton, and Stephen Hawking, seem to see further and deeper into Nature than ordinary mortals. What these two great scientists, living three centuries apart, also have in common is that they both occupied the most famous post in world science: the Lucasian Chair in Mathematics at Cambridge. Hawking recently retired from this chair having reached the mandatory age of sixty-five, and the world awaited the announcement of his successor. I was interviewed recently on BBC Radio to speculate on who I thought it might be. The interviewer even asked me if I was interested! It shows how little he knew about science for I quickly informed him that candidates need not bother applying unless they have a Nobel Prize under their belts or an equation named after them.
Four Hundred Years of Astronomy
Well, so much for a regular blog. Anyway, better late than never. So what have I been up to these past few months (I pretend to hear you ask)? Well, throughout March to end of June I was pretty much working flat out on my book (The House of Wisdom). It is now finished and submitted to Publishers, Penguin. Hopefully, all systems go for publication next Spring in time for London Book Fair. At the same time, I was filming for the new Channel 4 series “Genius of Britain” – No, not me! It is a series about the greatest names in British science, and is due out next year. Then, as of end of June I started filming my new series for the BBC on the history of Chemistry. This will keep me busy until the end of the Summer so I guess not much chance of any hols. Oh, and Episode 4 of my podcast “Jim Al-Khalili’s SciPod” is now out and available on iTunes.
Anyway, the subject of this blog is a timely reminder of this year’s big science celebrations. Not only is it Darwin200 and International Polar Year, it is also International Year of Astronomy (oh, and it is the centenary of the discovery of the atomic nucleus by Ernest Rutherford). But it is the astronomy angle I wish to say something about.
The exotic life of television documentary making
I am sitting on the train down from North Yorkshire (well Lancaster to be precise) to London Euston. It’s nine o’clock on a Friday evening and I am not going to get home this side of midnight. That’s despite the scares of weather delays proving unfounded. It’s been a long day as I’ve been up since five, having had a restless night’s sleep in my less than comfy bed at the New Inn Pub in Clapham in the Yorkshire Dales (who remembers the opening sequence in American Werewolf in London?)
Yes, another exotic day of filming is over.
The Chinese Pythagoras and the Iraqi Darwin
I’d like to touch on two quite different topics this week. The first is something neat that you may have seen before, but it was new to me. As some of you might know, I am currently writing a book on the history of Arabic science. I have been working on it for a year and a half and am due to hand over the manuscript to the publishers, Penguin Press, at the end of July. Still a long way to go though (as in: it is only half written!) Anyway, I am finding the historical research absolutely fascinating and just as thrilling as anything in physics, but quite different; in science we don’t have nearly as much opinion and conjecture as historians. But their disagreements are so much more lively and colourful. Well, in researching material for an early chapter on the mathematics of antiquity I came across a beautifully simple proof that requires no maths other than an easy diagram!
British Science Re-branded
Since I have decided to keep a blog, I think this means I am meant to update it fairly frequently. Damn, I knew there’d be a catch. Anyway, my good friend Anna has asked where the next one was so at least one person read the first blog. So any advice on how to improve on it or topics for discussion are welcome (email me at j.al-khalili@surrey.ac.uk).
So, what has been happening in science over the past week? Well, just in case the big news has passed you by, I will report here on what should have been a momentous event last week deserving of appropriate pomp, fanfare, razzmatazz and, well, a bit of a fuss I suppose. Instead, it passed unnoticed to the outside world with all fizz of a cheap sparkler on a damp bonfire night.