Table of contents

In recent issues of Physics Bulletin there have been a number of letters concerning the recruitment difficulties faced by job hunting physicists. There was particular criticism of PER's services, and in reply Mr F Dolan, Public Relations Manager, only pointed out the advantages of using them.

The Advisory Board for the Research Councils, the University Grants Committee and the Computer Board for the Universities and Research Councils have established a working party under the chairmanship of Professor A J Forty to investigate the need for a national facility for advanced research computing. They have asked the working party to assess the scientific, engineering and medical opportunities that such a facility would offer and to make proposals for its funding and organisation.

We read with distaste the description in the February 1985 issue of Physics Bulletin (p52) of the International Physics Olympiad and the suggestion that Britain might host the next event at a cost of £100 000. We hope that Britain will not host or even take part in this event which seems quite contrary to the proper route to excellence.

In the February 1985 issue of Physics Bulletin (p50) Professor H Lipson asserts that the principal objection to the theory of natural selection is that fossils should show more unbeneficial variations than beneficial ones. This is not true.

I agree with J M Irvine (Physics Bulletin January 1985 p4) that O-level and especially A-level physics ought ideally to be taught by graduate physicists. I teach in an 'academic' school where each year approximately 40 to 50 students will sit the A-level physics examination.

In the Appreciation of P A M Dirac (Physics Bulletin January 1985 p34) it is stated that his theoretical accomplishments 'contained the completely unexpected predicti on of the positron' and 'this was the first indication of antimatter which has become a well established general feature of elementary particle theory'. This seems to be a well-accepted achievement, frequently mentioned in textbooks on particle physics.

Professor G R Isaak of the University of Birmingham has been awarded the Max Born Medal and Prize of The Institute of Physics and the German Physical Society, at a ceremony in Munich in March. Born in 1933, George Isaak was educated at the University of Melbourne and then joined Imperial Chemical Industries Australia and New Zealand as a research physicist.

Details of the government's expenditure plans for education and science for the year 1985–6 were first announced in November 1984. Provision had been made for an enlargement of the in-service training grants scheme, and three new priority areas: the introduction of the General Certificate of Secondary Education; the teaching of craft, design and technology in schools; and staff development associated with PICKUP (Professional, Industrial and Commercial Updating) programmes in further education.

Professor Hubert Curien, President of the European Science Foundation, drew attention to the growing visibility of the ESF's work in his opening address at the 1984 annual assembly. This was held last November and also celebrated the Foundation's tenth anniversary (see Physics Bulletin October 1984 p411).

That peculiarly British institution, the External examiner, has recently come under the scrutiny of that peculiarly British hybrid, the Secretary of State for Education and Science. He is concerned about the methods adopted by universities for monitoring and maintaining academic standards.

It is gratifying to hear Physics Bulletin quoted in a speech by a man from Whitehall, even if he was speaking in an unofficial capacity. In a plenary session of the Institute's Solid State Physics conference held in Southampton last December, Robin Nicholson gave his perspective on academia and industry, and made more than one reference to the report in last October's Industry page of views imparted to the Cambridge Manufacturing Forum 1984.

The number of UK students entering university physics courses last October was 1% down on the previous year. After the 1982 peak of 2842 admissions, the 1984 figure of 2652 is the lowest since 1979.

The Japanese robot population increased by 17000 (30%) to 64000 in 1984, according to statistics released by the British Robot Association. This total exceeds that of Western Europe (20500) and the USA (13000) together.

Readers may be interested to know that we had only a few details of the Institute's Bragg Medal winner at the time of going to press for February, since he has been in Paris working on the new Museum of Science, Technology and Industry, where he is Visitor and Consultant. Professor Eric M Rogers was awarded the Bragg Medal and Prize for his many contributions to physics education, both in the USA and the UK, through his lectures, writing and work on both the Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC) and Nuffield teaching projects.

An after-dinner speech at an Institute of Physics conference can range from the merely amusing to the highly scientific. However, the one given by Sir Charles Frank of Bristol University to the Solid State Physics conference at Southampton in December (and previously to the Metals Society) turned out to be both amusing and of particular interest to the physicists present.

A working party has been set up recently to investigate the possibility of private sector funding for research council work. It has been appointed by the Advisory Board for the Research Councils, under the chairmanship of Professor Peter Mathias, with the aim of determining the current funding of scientific research by charities, industry and commerce.

An evaluation programme has been launched by ERA Technology to provide sponsors with an up to date assessment of new power semiconductor devices and their suitability for applications. The emphasis is on totally new types of device such as the FET-bipolar combination typified by the IGT, COMFET a n d GEMFET.

A new collision energy of 630 GeV has been achieved in the latest run of the CERN SPS collider: as a result of the installation of water booster pumps, the colliding proton and antiproton beams had energies of 315 GeV (previously 270 GeV). The collider operated from the end of September to December of last year after a break of more than a year.

Uranium targets manufactured at the Fulmer Research Laboratories (FRL) were bombarded with high energy protons to produce the first neutrons from the spallation neutron source (SNS) at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in December 1984 (see Physics Bulletin February 1985 p59). The method of manufacture of the targets was developed at Fulmer and subsequently the laboratories were chosen as manufacturer of targets for installation at the SNS.

An intense and very bright beam of infrared photons that will be useful for spectroscopy in the far-infrared region – a region that has always been hampered by the lack of intense broadband sources – is being produced by the electron storage ring of the synchrotron radiation source (SRS) at Daresbury Laboratory. This 96 m circumference ring accelerates electrons to an energy of 2 GeV, at which they emit intense beams of electromagnetic radiation.

A two-year programme to develop in-mould plating, a new manufacturing process for metal-plating plastic components, is being set up at Battelle's Columbus Laboratories. The method reverses the conventional process of electroplating on plastics.

After five months of faultless operation, the UK satellite (UKS) of the Active Magnetospheric Particle Tracer Explorers (AMPTE) mission (see Physics Bulletin November 1984 p461) seems to have come prematurely to the end of its useful life. On 16 January, the Operations Control Centre at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory failed to detect a signal from the satellite as it came over the horizon.

For most of its everyday uses, glass is a very stable material; however, for some applications it is now being used in such small dimensions that the corrosion effects caused by water are of importance. For example, water can permeate the plastic cladding of optical fibres and leach the glass, causing cracks which later give rise to fracture.

Pictured here is an 'electrical roadmap' showing the path of electrical activation in the living heart. The heart is the focal point of electrical impulses sent from the brain via the nervous system; inside the heart the signals spread out, ordering the muscular components to contract or relax.

In a valedictory article in the Journal of Physics E: Scientific Instruments entitled 'Decline and fall' (January 1985), which marked the end of a period of service on its Editorial Board, I launched into a diatribe on the way the United Kingdom appeared to be opting out of innovation in the vital area of research in scientific instrumentation. The peg upon which I hung that discussion was a graph of papers from the UK and Europe published in the journal over the recent decade.

In a century of great physicists, the three most outstanding are perhaps Einstein, Rutherford and Bohr. Bohr was born 100 years ago and died in 1962, so that many in the scientific community remember him.

The study of ultrashort laser pulses (USPS) has been a major activity within laser physics for nearly two decades. In the early years, the 'target' pulse duration was around 1 ps (=10^−l2s), but as figure 1 shows, progress did not stop there; indeed, techniques described below have recently enabled pulses as short as 12 fs (= 12 x 10⁻¹⁵ s) to be generated.

In September 1984 a questionnaire was sent to UK physics departments for completion by first-year students during their first week at university. The aim was to try to find out what attracts students towards physics before they come under the influence of their courses and teachers.

The last window on the universe, at least in the realm of electromagnetic radiation, is that provided by gamma rays, and it is with the view through this window that this article is concerned. It is here that the interaction between high-energy nuclear physics and astrophysics is so strong and there is the juxtaposition, so beloved of the physicist, of the very small and the very large, the very low energy (epitomised by photons of the 3 K microwave background) and the extremely high energy (characterised by cosmic rays of the highest particle energies ever recorded).

Z Hassan and C H Lai (eds) 1984 Singapore: World Scientific xvii + 369 pp price £32.20 (£16.10 paperback) ISBN 9971 950 87 1 Hdbk, 9971 950 88 X Pbk

This book consists of a set of essays by or about Abdus Salam, whose name in translation means 'Servant of peace'. It is clear from reading about this remarkable man that his life and work live up to his name.

Oliver M Ashford 1985 Bristol: Adam Hilger xiv + 304 pp price £18 (IOP members' price £14.40) ISBN 0 85274 7748

Before reading this excellent biography, practically all that I knew of L F Richardson was that he had attempted a numerical solution of the equations of hydrodynamics for the atmosphere some 50 years before this became routine practice in weather forecasting! Oliver Ashford's book reveals that this visionary had no formal training in meteorology or mathematics, yet was awarded a DSc and made an FRS. Richardson was a remarkable man, devoted to science and to Quakerism.

P D B Collins and A D Martin 1984 Bristol: Adam Hilger x + 169 pp price £9.95 (IOP members' price £7.96) ISBN 0 85274 768 3

Collins and Martin give a good account of the present status of the interactions involved in elementary particle physics, which makes a very suitable introduction to the subject for graduate students or others. At the same time, it will repay study by more established practitioners.

S S Wu and T T S Kuo (eds) 1984 Singapore: World Scientific xv + 748 pp price £63.70 ISBN 9971 966 35 2

The articles in this multi-author volume cover a very wide range of theoretical nuclear physics, from new topics such as the deduction of fundamental nucleon-nucleon interactions from the standard quark model to older topics such as the theory of nuclear matter. A few articles on nuclear astrophysics are also included.

Th Papadopoulou and N D Tracas (eds) 1983 Singapore: World Scientific x + 689 pp price £56.80 ISBN 9971 950 99 5

This volume contains excellent introductory lecture courses on electroweak theory by Paschos and perturbative quantum chromodynamics by Contogouris, and shorter accounts of lattice gauge theories, grand unified theories, electron-positron interactions and the like, all aimed at postgraduate students. There are also short seminars on some topics of current interest in particle physics.

Arthur P Cracknell (ed) 1983 Dordrecht: D Reidel xii + 466 pp price $78 ISBN 90 277 1608 0

This book, which presents the proceedings of a 1982 summer school at Dundee University, offers good state of the art reviews of a broad range of remote sensing techniques which can be applied in marine science. Its major contribution is to marine science rather than to technology.

David Shapland and Michael Rycroft 1984 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 192 pp price £11.95 ISBN 0 521 26077 9

This book answers perhaps 90% of the questions anyone might ask about research in space, whether descriptive (what happens if your lower half is kept at reduced pressure?) or mathematical (how can you distinguish carbonates from hydroxyl-bearing minerals from up there?). There are on average four excellent photos or diagrams to every double-page spread, a whole page of acronyms, and a very extensive index from which (Murphy's law) your test topic will be missing.

R F Mould (ed) 1984 Bristol: Adam Hilger xiv + 246 pp price £24 (IOP members' price £19.20) ISBN 0 85274 780 2

These are the proceedings of a workshop on computer acquisition and analysis of data on cancer patients (WHO, Geneva, 26–28 March 1984). They deal with the impact of microcomputers (two papers), with software in use (ten), with data communications (five), with what data should be collected (nine), with the statistical evaluation of cancer treatment (five), with epidemiology (five), with clinical trials' protocols (two) and with legal and ethical aspects (four).

Maurice Goldsmith (ed) Harlow: Longman 1984 xxii + 275 pp price £16.95 ISBN 0 582 90256 8

This book is a collection of papers describing UK science policy in several areas of R and D funded by the government. The topics covered are: agricultural research policy; big science; biotechnology policy; defence research; energy research policy; higher education; social sciences; transport research; and a comparison with policy-making in France and The Netherlands.

S R Elliott 1984 Harlow: Longman xiv + 386 pp price £25 ISBN 0 582 44636 8

This text is intended for final-year undergraduates and for research workers. It is a wide-ranging, densely packed volume including most amorphous systems but dominated by amorphous semiconductors.

McClintock, D J Meredith and J K Wigmore 1984 Glasgow: Blackie vi + 258 pp price £19.75 (£10.25 paperback) ISBN 0 216 91594 5 Hdbk, 0 216 91593 7 Pbk

Low temperature physics is no longer an easily identifiable separate field of solid state physics, except in so far as it concerns macroscopic quantum phenomena (superconductivity and superfluidity). These are, of course, the most fascinating aspects of matter at low temperatures: the chapters in this book on superconductivity, liquid 4He and liquid He provide clear, well organised introductions to these phenomena.

Victor Guillemin and Shlomo Sternberg 1984 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press xi + 468 pp price £32.50 ISBN 0 521 24866 3

The authors explain, in this book, how a number of laws of physics can be expressed symplectically, that is in terms of antisymmetric bilinear forms (such as Poisson brackets). They explore in detail several levels in the geometrisation of optics, from rotationally symmetric linear ray theory (Gaussian optics), through general geometrical and physical optics, up to Maxwell's electromagnetism.

S L Chin and P Lambropoulos (eds) 1984 Orlando: Academic xii + 272 pp price £42 ISBN 0 12 172780 7

This multi-author book gives a good survey of current work and developments in what is an expanding research field. Although the content of each chapter reflects the personal bias of the author the literature is adequately surveyed, and a good balance is provided between theory and experiment.

W Lindinger, T D Märk and F Howorka (eds) 1984 Vienna: Springer vii + 311 pp price DM82 ISBN 3 211 81823 5

This is a book for experts. There are 13 reviews of current research preceded by a very general historical introduction.

J Rahnefa et al 1984 Chichester: John Wiley xi + 985 pp price £92.45 ISBN 0 471 88914 8

This magnum opus of nigh on 1000 pages is in the very best traditions of American technical writing. The four authors are all associated with the Electric Power Research Institute, a well-respected Californian organisation, and have clearly poured their hearts and minds into a book at once all-embracing, yet eminently readable.

Y R Shen 1984 Chichester: John Wiley xii + 563 pp price £49.45 ISBN 0 471 88998 9

Exhaustive, if not exhausting, is the appropriate epithet for this book; the subject has come a long way since Bloembergen's modest monograph of 20 years ago and the author of this book has been active in the field for most of that period. Nonlinear optical effects depend on the presence of a material medium and they are due to nonlinear variation of the polarisability of the medium at high field strengths.

P Hariharan 1984 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press xii + 319 pp price £35 ISBN 0 521 24348 3

It is the declared aim of the author of this book to provide a 'self-contained treatment of the principles, techniques and applications of optical holography with particular emphasis on recent developments'. He has covered a wide range of topics in this expanding field at a level which is suitable for both the student and research worker.

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.