Table of contents

There are several points I would like to make about the results of the survey discussed by T P P Hall in the June issue of Physics Bulletin. Firstly, Dr Hall notes that many physicists in industry complain about the Institute's lack of relevance to physics in industry.

I am writing in response to the letter from Professor Lipson (Physics Bulletin August 1983 p314) in which he takes me to task over my interpretation of Schrodinger's book What is Life?. I referred to the book in my article 'Organisation without simple order', published in the April 1983 issue of Physics Bulletin.

I noted Dr Blitz's letter in the September issue of Physics Bulletin (p363) regarding nondestructive testing and the report which I had given on our ultrasonic NDT review meeting. The main point of my comment was that at the meeting it was felt that it would be good if physicists and engineers in their undergraduate training made some contact with the subject of NDT, not that all students should be made experts in the field.

'The nuclear world, with all its perils, is the scientists' creation: it is certainly not a world that came about in response to any external demand.' A full discussion of this statement by Lord Zuckerman (in Apocalypse Now? 1980 Nottingham: Spokesman) would, and perhaps should, take a complete issue of Physics Bulletin.

New directions for CODATA, the Committee on Data for Science and Technology of the International Council for Scientific Unions, were agreed at a CODATA conference in France in June. They are summarised by W W Hutchison, CODATA President, in the August 1983 issue of CODA TA Newsletter.

The first Asia Pacific Physics conference was held at the National University of Singapore on 12-18 June 1983, under the joint chairmanship of A Arima, K K Phua and P P Ong. There were about 300 participants and almost 70% of this number came from the following countries: Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, China, France, West Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, USA and Singapore.

A step forward in the reduction of technical barriers to trade was achieved in October 1983 with the signing of a number of important agreements between the UK and USA in the fields of laboratory testing and standards. The Directors of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and the US National Bureau of Standards (NBS) met at the American Embassy in Paris for the occasion.

During the 1950s and 1960s, those of us in industrial research management looked with apprehension and often with envy at the government research, establishments. Everything seemed to be going their way.

A report published in September 1983, by a team of two coordinating the work of individual examining officers nominated by each body under scrutiny, recommends ways of obtaining considerable savings in the expenditure on research council support services. The councils concerned are the Science and Engineering Research Council, the Agricultural Research Council, the Medical Research Council and the Natural Environment Research Council.

In July 1983 an open letter was sent to the President of the USSR Supreme Soviet, Yuri Andropov, by Bulgarian dissident scientist Stefan Marinov, now living in Austria. The letter threatened that Dr Marinov would commit suicide on the steps of the Soviet Embassy in Paris on 16 January 1984 if Dr Yuri Orlov, the Soviet physicist, had not been freed by then from his imprisonment.

Should the British Association for the Advancement of Science play an active role in reviewing the effectiveness of research and development funding in the UK? In the United States, the corresponding American Association has in the past eight years created a new kind of policy analysis tool by investigating where government funding goes and holding an annual two–day science policy colloquium at which around 500 representatives from Congress, government agencies, industry and universities and other interested bodies meet to discuss the findings of an annual report.

The Institute of Physics Plasma Physics Group held its 10th annual conference on 29 June-1 July 1983, hosted this year (as in its first) by the School of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University College of North Wales. This meeting is the established domestic forum for current research within the broad field of plasma physics.

I arrived, after a very early morning start, at the Renold Building of UMIST for the conference and exhibition – Sensors '83 – held on 20–22 September 1983.1 was soon met by our Assistant Meetings Officer, Delia Mayston, who rapidly and efficiently dispensed the customary goodies while amassing at the same time an enviable pile of notes.

We have developed an optical instrument using a combination of colours to monitor simultaneously the velocity, diameter and concentration of fine particles or droplets entrained in a moving fluid. The method is fast and capable of high spatial resolution and has a large dynamic range in all the measured variables (velocity 10"3-50 ms"1, diameter 1–500 urn, concentration <10u m"8).

A black hole some 100 million times heavier than our sun is at the centre of the quasar–like core of galaxy NGC 4151, according to the latest results from the International Ultraviolet Explorer satellite. This is the very first time that astronomers have 'weighed' the centre of a quasar, and the discovery strengthens the theory that the concentrated power of quasars is due to gas swirling around a very massive black hole in the centre of a galaxy.

For some time it has been the feeling of many northern research groups working in the area of fine particle magnetism that closer links would foster both work of excellence and increased levels of funding and also pave the way for UK industry to re-enter the extremely important production areas associated with recording tape and permanent magnet manufacture. It was with this in mind that the inaugural meeting of the Northern Fine Particle Magnetism Association (NFPMA) was held during the three-day conference on magnetic fluids at UCNW Bangor, North Wales, on 28 June 1983.

Another unusual object in the solar system has been discovered by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS). Designated 1983TB, the object appears to be the parent body for the Geminid stream of meteoroids, visible as a meteor shower in December.

Seismic disturbances on the sun must surely contain a wealth of information about the solar interior. We believe that because there is a strong similarity to the seismology of the earth.

For the last five or six years an exciting programme of research in the field of photonuclear physics has been carried out by a small group of researchers operating largely from the Physics Department of Edinburgh University. The work stemmed from previous Edinburgh research into electron–induced fission and nuclear giant resonances, and Glasgow research into photon–induced proton knockout reactions.

1983 marked the 400th anniversary of the University of Edinburgh. In this article Professor Cochran, the current Professor of Natural Philosophy, looks back at some of his notable predecessors and their contemporaries in science

This year marked the 60th anniversary of the discovery of the Compton effect, the inelastic scattering of x–rays by electrons, by Arthur Holly Compton. By treating the x–rays as particles Compton was able to derive a simple expression for the wavelength change or Compton shift upon scattering.

Mössbauer's discovery 25 years ago of recoilless nuclear resonant fluorescence gained him instant recognition – the Nobel prize in physics at the age of 32. Since then Mossbauer spectroscopy has developed into an important technique.

J P Killingbeck 1983 Bristol: Adam Hilger x + 178 pp price £11.95 (IOP members' price £8.95)

The aim of this book is to demonstrate how microcomputers can be used to solve many scientific problems simply and accurately. It starts with a useful comparison of the computational abilities of the various machines now on the market, and deals with for example methods for the numerical solution of differential equations, integration, series summations and matrix equations, applied to a variety of problems in nonrelativistic quantum mechanics.

S Ramaseshan, Mr F Richardson and A J C Wilson (eds) 1982 Bangalore: Indian Academy of Sciences 313 pp price Rs25 ($9) (Rs50 ($18) to institutions)

This monograph provides a series of reviews, written by eminent specialists and based on lectures given at a microsymposium held in conjunction with the XIIth international congress on crystallography. Among the topics dealt with are intensity statistics (including the effect of heavy atoms), the correlation between intensity statistics and the validity of phase relationships, Bijvoet differences, counting statistics, R factors and refinement procedures.

Stephen Castell 1983 Sunbury on Thames: Quartermaine House 120 pp price £2.95

Assuming that some physicists would wish to bluff their way in computing, this book would help. Sadly the style is somewhat reminiscent of popular CB publications; and the author spends a lot of time saying 'Look at me – I'm being funny'.

T Matsubara (ed) 1982 Berlin: Springer xi + 446 pp price DM100

This book falls somewhat uneasily between a conventional textbook of solid state physics and a series of specialised monographs. The central theme is the use of modern theoretical techniques and statistical mechanics.

J Mort and G Pfister (eds) 1982 Chichester: John Wiley xi + 336 pp price £37.30

There have been many treatments of organic semiconductors but this one is to be specially welcomed. It appears in an explosive and bewildering era of intense interest in the electrical behaviour of organic and, particularly, polymeric materials.

Montroll and J L Lebowitz (eds) 1982 Amsterdam: North-Holland vii + 440 pp price Dfl 125

This is the eighth volume of a famous series, written by distinguished authors. The result is of the standard which we have been accustomed to expect, altogether readable and thorough.

N H March and M Parrinello 1982 Bristol: Adam Hilger xi + 274 pp price £14 (IOP members' price £10.50)

As a volume of a 'Graduate Student Series in Physics' this book is aimed mainly at students on postgraduate courses. It concentrates on the major collective effects predicted by condensed matter theory and almost all of the book is concerned with the solid state.

Harry H Mark 1982 Connecticut: John J Corbett Press xii + 198 pp price $18.50

This is a book for armchair reading. The author has written this as an entertaining exercise – it is not directed at anyone in particular, but those concerned with the history of science will find it of interest.

R V Wagoner and D W Goldsmith 1982 Oxford: W H Freeman 195 pp price £7.95 (paperback)

This excellent book assumes no prior knowledge of physics or mathematics, yet it manages to explain how our universe has been studied from prehistoric times until the present decade. Advanced theories are explained in detail when necessary, with the aid of excellent diagrams, but mathematical proofs are not given.

Geoffrey Oldham (ed) 1982 Guildford: SRHE 220 pp price £6.60 (SRHE and Bookseller £4.40)

This is a revolutionary book. In the British university system, the inseparability of teaching and research, the desirability of all academics doing research, and the appropriateness of all departments being equally capable of supporting research, have long been taken to be axiomatic.

T F Torrence (ed) 1982 Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press xiii + 103 pp price £7.50

In 1865 James Clerk Maxwell published in the Philosophical Transactions a long paper entitled 'A dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field'. In this work, about which he wrote to a relative, 'I have a paper afloat, with an electromagnetic theory of light, which, till I am convinced of the contrary, Ihold to be great guns', he set up the electromagnetic field equations unifying electricity and magnetism, and identified light as 'an electromagnetic disturbance in the form of waves propagated through the electromagnetic field according to electromagnetic laws'.

W B Mann 1982 Oxford: Pergamon xxx + 135 pp price $17

Physicists writing their autobiographies normally stress their contributions to their chosen discipline. Dr Mann, a physicist of very solid attainments in scientific research and administration, had to concentrate on different topics: having to give the lie to rumours accusing him of espionage on behalf of the USSR.

Dewey B Larson 1982 Oregon: North Pacific ix + 131 pp price $9

Anyone giving thought to the question appreciates how difficult it is to say what he means by a 'fact'. This book professes to be about facts, but the author fails to make clear what he means by facts, or what facts he is writing about.

A G Cairns–Smith 1982 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press ix + 477 pp price £15

Genetic Takeover is about the origins of life on earth. It presents a radical new point of view to those of us who have previously held to the chemical evolution theory, in which a 'primeval soup' leads to the formation of elementary biochemicals (as originally put forward by Urey).

R F Stebbings and F B Dunning 1983 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press ix + 515 pp price £40

Rydberg states are those in which an outer electron is excited. While this has been a general usage in molecular spectroscopy for decades, the term has recently been used to describe states of particularly high excitation in which the excited electron is so far from the centre of the system that the energy is almost independent of the species.

Ken Wilber (ed) 1983 Boulder/London: Shambhala (Routledge and Kegan Paul) 301 pp price £7.95 (paperback)

This book is about the relationship that may exist between 'real science', as represented for example by physics or physiology, and 'real religion', as represented for example by mysticism or transcendence. This relationship quite suddenly attracted the interest of a number of respected biological, medical and physical scientists in the 1970s.

Brian Jenner (ed) 1983 London: Home Mission Division of the Methodist Church vi + 96 pp price £1.75 (paperback)

I admit to having been misled by the title. I was looking forward to the views of scientists for and against Christianity, and of Christians for and against various aspects of scientific progress.

Monthly round-up of new instruments, components and equipment released by industry vendors.

Information about appointments and awards, meetings, and member services from the Institute of Physics.

Late-breaking conference news, calls for papers and general news.