Kadanoff takes Newton Prize Physics in a flash winning the Isaac Newton Medal, he said: “I feel abso-lutely wonderful about it. It’s a recognition made all the more wonderful by

The newspaper of the physics community

Follow us on Twitter and Facebookhttptwittercomphysicsnews

wwwfacebookcominstituteofphysics

Plasma creates a showA talk sponsored by the IOPrsquos South West Branch on ldquoExploring Plasma Universerdquo was given by former IOP schools lecturer Melanie Windridge Lucie Green and Kate Lancaster in June at the Cheltenham Science Festival Images used included the MAST tokamak plasma (above)

Minister launches IOP in Irelandrsquos reportSeaacuten Sherlock Irelandrsquos minister for research and innovation launched the Institute of Physics in Irelandrsquos report Physics in Ireland the brightest minds go further on 15 June It shows that 14 of Irelandrsquos physics graduates earn more than euro100 000 a yearwwwiopirelandorg

Physics in a flash

July 2011

Kadanoff takes Newton Prize

Prof Leo Kadanoff a theoretical physicist whose research has spanned a wide variety of fields has been awarded the Institutersquos Isaac Newton Medal and Prize The medal is given for outstanding contributions to physics and is the only Institute medal that is open to an international field

This is the fourth year in which the medal has been pre-sented the previous winners being quantum physicist Prof Anton Zeilinger particle physicist and cosmologist Prof Alan Guth and theoretical physicist Prof Edward Witten an expert in superstring theory and supersymmetric quantum field theory

Kadanoff is an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Chicago and a former president of the American Physical Society During his career he has worked on areas as diverse as superconductivity phase transitions urban growth and planning and disorder turbulence and chaos in physical systems

His citation for the Isaac Newton Medal says that the award is for ldquoinventing conceptual tools that reveal the deep implications of scale invariance on the behaviour of phase transitions and dynamical systemsrdquo

He told Interactions ldquoPhase transitions was the one area in which I made the most original and deep contributions I started out working in the quantum mechanics of the interac-tions between electrons and radiation and in superconduc-tivity and that occupied my attention for the first half-dozen years that I was a physicist

ldquoHowever after a time I became aware that there was a substantial problem with what happened near the critical point of phase transitions There had not been very extensive analysis of Lars Onsagerrsquos solution of the 2-dimensional Ising model so when I had a period on sabbatical in Cambridge in 1965 I worked on that problem After nine months in Britain I returned to the University of Illinois and I took that calculation and converted the understanding of what I had done to see what might happen near the phase transitionrdquo

Kadanoff grew up in New York and received his undergrad-uate degree and PhD from Harvard before undertaking post-doctoral research at the Neils Bohr Institute for Theoretical Studies in Copenhagen He became an assistant professor of physics at the University of Illinois in 1962 going on to become an associate professor in 1963 then professor at the university in 1965

He became professor of physics and engineering at Brown University in 1969 and professor of physics at the University of Chicago in 1978 becoming the universityrsquos John D and Catherine T MacArthur Distinguished Service Professor of Physics and Mathematics from 1982ndash2003 Since 2004

he has been emeritus professor of physics at the University of Chicago Currently he is working on hydrodynamics and problems in general relativity

Among his achievements Kadanoff has with others pio-neered the study of scaling or fractal patterns that occur as a dynamical system evolves into chaotic behaviour like that of a turbulent fluid He and others also showed how to use the concept of fractal measures to address complex scale-invariant patterns like those encountered in turbulence

He has enjoyed working on very different problems in phys-ics ldquoI believe the tools of a physicist ndash particularly a theoreti-cal physicist ndash are useful in a wide variety of contextsrdquo he said ldquoDifferent fields of physics come and go and problems get solved If you stick with a problem after it has been solved itrsquos not much fun for you and not of much use to the world I try to change the area that I work on once every seven years or so ndash I try to do different thingsrdquo

Kadanoff has won numerous medals and prizes and in 1999 he was one of the recipients of the USrsquos National Medal of Science awarded by President Clinton Asked how he felt about winning the Isaac Newton Medal he said ldquoI feel abso-lutely wonderful about it Itrsquos a recognition made all the more wonderful by hearing about the great people who received

the prize before merdquoThe winner of the Newton

Medal is invited to give the Newton Lecture and Kadanoff will give the lecture in London in January 2012l For details of all the winners of the Institutersquos 2011 awards see pp4ndash5

ldquoI try to change the area I work on every seven years or sordquo

Heather Pinnell reports on the award of the IOPrsquos Isaac Newton Medal and Prize for outstanding contributions to physics

Leo Kadanoff is to receive the IOPrsquos Isaac Newton Medal and Prize

Interactions Ju l y 2011

Physics in Ireland the brightest minds go furtherMay 2011

A report prepared for the Institute of Physics by Tom Martin amp Associates

Physicists Go far

Earn more

copyCC

INTJuly11p1v5indd 3 22611 153428

2 news

Humanity will look back on the present time as a ldquogolden agerdquo in the discovery of extrasolar planets Prof Hugh Jones predicted at a meeting in June organised by the IOP and the Royal Astronomical Society and chaired by the IOPrsquos president Prof Jocelyn Bell-Burnell

The event at the IOPrsquos London office highlighted advances in the detection and understanding of extrasolar planets or ldquoexoplanetsrdquo with 10 new ones being added last month to the existing total of 550

Jones professor of astronomy at the University of Hertfordshire said the search for exoplanets had changed from being a struggling field with just a few groups involved in research to an expanding area world-wide with new programmes and new journals springing up

Perceptions of the science began to change in 1995 when the first exo-planet was discovered he said At first only hot gas giants larger than Jupiter were found but improve-

ments in detection techniques meant that objects smaller than six Earth masses were now being discovered

Although low-mass planets were harder to detect most exoplanets were now being found in this range and Earth-mass sized planets were probably very common he said

While most exoplanets are found by observing slight changes in the host starrsquos radial velocity other methods include detecting a dip in

the light from a star being transited by a planet

Suzanne Aigrain of the University of Oxford is co-investigator for the CoRot orbiting space telescope oper-ated by the French space agency She explained how ground-based and orbiting telescopes complement each other in finding and measuring exoplanets The Kepler telescope had found more than 1000 likely exoplanets by observing transits

within a year of its launch she said ldquoThere is vast scope for further progress Over the next few decades we will be able to map out and under-stand the full population of exoplan-ets study their atmospheres and look for signs of liferdquo

Giovanna Tinetti awarded the IOPrsquos Moseley Medal (p5) described how her group was using molecular spectroscopy in the infrared region to study the atmospheres of exoplanets and finding molecules such as water and carbon dioxide Research was going on at other wavelengths and through other methods and much more could be discovered she said

During questions one PhD stu-dent asked about the employment prospects in UK exoplanet research Aigrain said that there were concerns but the field was doing comparatively well ldquoIf you want to stay in research exoplanets would be a good area to choose but itrsquos popular so the com-petition is pretty toughrdquo she saidHeather Pinnell

Several Institute members have been recognised in the Queenrsquos Birthday Honours announced in June

Prof Mark Welland (pictured right) chief scientific adviser at the Ministry of Defence and former editor-in-chief of IOP Publishingrsquos journal Nanotechnology received a knighthood Frances Saunders chief executive of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at the Ministry of Defence was made a Commander of the Order of the Bath

CBEs went to Prof Jennifer Thomas professor of particle phys-

ics at University College London for services to science to Prof Andrew Wallard lately director of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in France for services to international measurement and to Michael Howse senior consultant at Rolls-Royce plc for services to engineering Howse shared the IOPrsquos Glazebrook Prize this year (see p4)

Peter Batchelor head of electron-ics and photonics at the Department for Business Innovation and Skills received an OBE as did John Bond science support manager of

Northamptonshire Police who was honoured for services to forensic sci-ence and to the police MBEs for serv-ices to science went to Prof Sheila Rowan director of the University of Glasgowrsquos Institute for Gravitational Research and Robin Clegg head of science in society at the Science and Technology Facilities Council

The IOPrsquos chief executive Bob Kirby-Harris congratulated those who received honours Their recogni-tion was ldquoyet more evidence of the crucial contribution that physicists make to societyrdquo he said

A package of targeted support for small- and medium-sized enterprises promotion of knowledge exchange and a programme to establish a net-work of Technology and Innovation Centres (TICs) are among the commit-ments that the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) has made for the period

from now until 2015Its plans are set out in Concept to

Commercialisation a strategy for business innovation 2011ndash2015 published by the TSB in May

Welcoming the publication of the strategy the IOPrsquos chief execu-tive Bob Kirby-Harris said ldquoSince its inception in 2008 the TSB has made a significant contribution to promoting innovation across the UK and supporting high-growth compa-nies including those that depend on

physics and physicistsldquoThe new strategy for 201115

looks set to continue the trend par-ticularly through the expansion of the Small Business Research Initiative which promotes innovation in pro-curement and the establishment of a network of TICs that are aimed at developing centres of excellence in areas of research that offer a global market lead

ldquoSignificant economic growth requires technological innovation

and that is why I am sure that the government will continue to support the TSBrsquos mission The Institute is committed to working with the TSB to bring academics and businesses together thus ensuring the applica-tion and communication of the latest physics research for societyrsquos great-est possible benefitrdquo

Concept to Commercialisation is downloadable from ldquocorporate docu-mentsrdquo in ldquopublicationsrdquo on the TSBrsquos website at wwwinnovateukorg

Infrared image of three planets of the star HR 8799 with the stellar flux subtracted

Scientists are recognised in Queenrsquos Birthday Honours

Innovation plan is welcomed by IOP

Exoplanets make a star turn at the IOP

Prof Mark Welland who is now a knight

3newsNews in Brief

The University of San Carlos in Cebu City Philippines was the venue for a workshop on entrepreneurship organised jointly by the IOP and the Philippinesrsquo two physical societies

The workshop held from 30 May to 3 June was aimed at scientists and engineers in the Philippines who wanted to learn more about how to commericalise their research It attracted 63 participants

The speakers included experi-enced entrepreneurs Surya Raghu and Dawood Parker the IOPrsquos direc-tor of communications Beth Taylor and business consultant Richard Brooks who have addressed previ-ous entrepreneurship workshops organised by the IOP They tackled issues common to entrepreneurs in many countries including making a business case for an idea assessing opportunities for commercialisation and evaluating the technology- readiness of an invention

Local speakers focused on topics specific to the Philippines such as programmes to support technology transfer the legal framework and intellectual property Prof Henry

Ramos of the countryrsquos National Institute of Physics and Evelyn Taboada of the University of San Carlos described their experience of commercialising research

There was also input from Regina Luttge of the University of Twente in the Netherlands who addressed issues of social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship for sustain-ability Prof Tony Bunn director of the Innovation Centre of the South African Medical Research Council talked about the lessons to be learnt

from spin-offs and the decisions to be faced by potential entrepreneurs

The workshop also aimed to encourage universities in the Philippines to bring entrepreneurship skills into their science curricula a topic addressed by Raghu and the IOPrsquos international development manager Dipali Bhatt-Chauhan

After the event an agreement for electronic affiliate member-ship of the IOP was signed by the Physics Association of Visayas and Mindanao

The IOP has joined two other institu-tions to support a report produced by the public policy think tank The Smith Institute Unlocking Potential Perspectives on Women in Science Engineering and Technology

The IOPrsquos curriculum support manager Clare Thomson has con-tributed a chapter ldquoThe Importance of Schoolingrdquo which discusses some of the IOPrsquos work on girlsrsquo participa-tion in physics and how to increase

it Other contributors include Prof Dame Athene Donald (who was pro-filed in Interactions in June) who writes about the ldquoleaky pipelinerdquo through which women are lost to pro-fessional science

Thomson commented ldquoIt is a major cause for concern that the pro-portion of girls studying physics post-16 has remained around 22 for the past 20 years as A-level physics or its equivalent is a gateway subject

to a whole range of careers in the physical sciences engineering and technology as well as in many other areas of finance and businessrdquo

The publication was edited by Meg Munn MP and supported by the IOP the Institution of Engineering and Technology and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers It can be downloaded from the publications section of The Smith Institutersquos web-site at wwwsmith-instituteorguk

IOP Publishing has introduced an open access publishing option on 23 of its subscription-based journals Announcing the move in June the company said that it was intended to support authors who wished to publish on an open access basis in the IOPrsquos traditional subscription-based journals as well as in its seven

ldquopurerdquo open access journals or were mandated by their funding bodies to do so

In what the company calls a ldquohybrid open access modelrdquo authors can pay an article publication charge of pound1700 curren1950 or $2700 to make their work open for all to read in per-petuity All submissions will be sub-ject to the IOPrsquos normal peer review process

IOP Publishing says that it will take revenues from the charges fully into account when setting prices for its

subscription journals to ensure that publication costs are not paid for twice The IOP is in discussion with its publishing partners on the suit-ability of introducing the option on co-published journals

Stephen Hall managing director of IOP Publishing said that the IOP was a pioneer in open access pub-lishing and the new option was a natural extension of this ldquoWe want authors to be able to publish in their journal of choice regardless of busi-ness modelrdquo he said

Prof Tony Bunn (left) with a participant in the workshop held in the Philippines

Women in SET report has input from IOP

IOP Publishing to add more access

Philippines hosts seminar

Seven Institute members were elected to fellowship of the Royal Society in May The seven are Prof Jeremy Baumberg director of the Nanophotonics Centre at the University of Cambridge Prof Stanley Cowley professor of solar-planetary physics at the University of Leicester Prof Sir Colin Humphreys professor of materials science and director of research in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy University of Cambridge Prof Gerhard Materlik chief executive of Diamond Light Source Ltd Prof Thomas McLeish pro-vice-chancellor (research) at the University of Durham Prof Mervyn Miles head of the nanophysics and soft matter group at the University of Bristol and Prof Konstantin Novoselov a research associate at the University of Manchester who has also just been made an honorary fellow of the IOP (see p8)

Physics students Gabriel Davies from the University of Oxford and Thomas Smith from Kingrsquos College London were joint winners of this yearrsquos Environmental Physics Group essay competition Each received a prize of pound150 The competition is held to ldquorecognise excellence in communicating the significance value and rewarding nature of engaging with environmental physicsrdquo The runner-up was University of Oxford student Emily Adlam who received a pound100 prize while William Parker from Leys School Cambridge was commended and received pound25 The winners presented a synopsis of their essays and received their prizes at the grouprsquos annual meeting in May Davies wrote about physics and the future of transport and Smithrsquos essay was on biomass burning and its influence on global climate change Pictured (left to right) are Parker Adlam Davies and Smith

INTJulyp3v5indd 3 23611 103630

awards4

Faraday MedalProf Andrew Watson University of Leeds Watson has been a pivotal figure in cosmic ray experiments for four decades and is one of the worldrsquos most distinguished and respected experimental physicists He has worked almost exclusively on the extensive air shower technique for the detection of cosmic rays with particular interest in those of the

highest energies In 1991 together with J W Cronin he established the largest ever cosmic-ray project the Pierre Auger Observatory covering an area 30 times the size of Paris The ambitious project has delivered demonstrating an anisotropy in the arrival direction of the highest-energy cosmic rays possibly indicating active galactic nuclei as the source This may well be the most significant experimental discovery made to date in particle astrophysics

Glazebrook MedalProf Richard Parker Prof Philip Ruffles Mike Howse Rolls-Royce GroupThe medal is awarded for the creation development and expansion of the Rolls-Royce University Technology Centre network which has created a cross-cultural working environment for company and university staff in basic science applied research staff

training and technology transfer The network is widely recognised as the exemplar for efficient and effective universityndashindustry collaboration and has been vital in providing technology support for product development and fundamental research

Mott MedalProf Andrew Mackenzie University of St AndrewsMackenzie a pioneer of the study of superconductivity and strongly correlated electron physics in oxides worked with S R Julian on Tl2Ba2CuO6 performing the first measurements of the metal-superconductor boundary at dilution refrigerator temperatures This began a 15-year search for the de Haas-van Alphen

effect in that material with the successful measurement performed by a BristolndashToulousendashSt Andrews collaboration led by N Hussey on crystals grown by Mackenzie He established the nature of the metallic state from which the superconductivity condenses and provided the first convincing evidence that the superconducting state has unconventional symmetries His recent work has centred on the formation of non-superconducting correlated phases in the vicinity of quantum critical points

Payne-Gaposchkin MedalProf Yvonne Elsworth University of Birmingham Elsworthrsquos work in the 1970s and 1980s on global solar oscillations led to the creation of a quantitative spectroscopy to study the deep interior of the Sun The global autonomous network of observatories that she initiated has provided the definitive data on several substantial issues In the early 1990s it revealed that

the solar core was consistent with a standard solar model providing the first indication that in the solar neutrino problem solar models were not in error This led to the deduction of neutrino masses Her work also showed that the core of the Sun rotates more slowly than the surface necessitating angular momentum evolution of stars Her recent work shows that new solar abundances are inconsistent with the helioseismology data in the core and convection zone This remains an important challenge to the theory as abundances underlie all stellar models

Joule MedalDonald Arnone TeraView LtdArnone has taken terahertz radiation from a laboratory demonstration to a diagnostic technique that has aroused worldwide interest In 1999 he obtained the first terahertz image of human tissue ndash a tooth ndash showing decay and enamel wear more clearly than X-rays In 2001 TeraView was established with Arnone

as chief executive He led a programme improving both hardware and software for the pharmaceutical industry resulting in breakthroughs in non-invasively detecting polymorphic changes in active ingredients in tablets ndash a major problem in the industry with serious safety implications Arnonersquos team have subsequently worked with more than 20 of the worldrsquos leading pharmaceutical companies on improving tablet efficiency New methods for predicting dissolution properties have also been found

Chadwick MedalProf Terry Wyatt University of ManchesterWyatt has played an extremely prominent role in the evolution of hadron collider physics over 25 years As a CERN fellow he showed great character skill and tenacity in being able to demonstrate the spurious nature of the ldquotop-quarkrdquo signal claimed by the UA1 collaboration simultaneously doing a valuable

service to science and confirming his reputation as a formidable data analyst Playing a prominent role in the D-Zero collaboration at Fermilab he established a strong Manchester University group which has made outstanding contributions in electroweak top quark and Higgs physics including an innovative analysis of double Z boson production He was co-spokesperson of D-Zero leading it when it obtained the first evidence of Bs meson oscillations and top quark production He chaired the LHCC at a crucial stage in the run-up to first beam collisions

Business and Innovation MedalGraham Batey Oxford Instruments NanoScienceBatey has made a sustained outstanding contribution to the application of low-temperature physics in an industrial high technology environment He has worked at the forefront of Oxford Instrumentsrsquo market-leading low-temperature product engineering from 1985 to the present day leading numerous innovations in

low-temperature applications Recent innovations that allow pulse tube refrigerators to replace the use of conventional liquid cryogens and advances in quantum information processing research have created a resurgence of interest in low-temperature research in which Batey has played a pivotal role in turning applied physics concepts into practical engineering solutions He has led a team of engineers to develop and enhance Oxford Instrumentsrsquo cryogen-free dilution refrigerator products a technology development that has been turned into a commercial success

The Institute of Physics 2011 awards will be presented by the Institutersquos incoming president Sir Peter Knight at the Awards Dinner on 6 October As well as the Isaac Newton Medal (see p1) the following awards have been made

Dirac MedalProf Christopher Isham Imperial College LondonIsham is an authority in quantum gravity and the foundations of quantum theory One of the first to put quantum field theory on a curved background into a proper mathematical form his work on anti-de Sitter space is now part of the subjectrsquos standard toolkit He invented the concept of twisted fields which encode

topological aspects of the spacendashtime into quantum theory He has made significant contributions to quantum cosmology especially the conceptually difficult ldquoproblem of timerdquo His recent work on the innovative application of topos theory in theoretical physics has shown how it could be used to give a new logical interpretation of standard quantum theory and to extend the notion of quantisation giving a firm footing to ideas such as ldquoquantum topologyrdquo or ldquoquantum causal setsrdquo

awards 5

Young MedalProf Ian Walmsley University of Oxford Walmsley is a pioneer in quantum optics using lasers to engineer photons with precisely controlled quantum states which in concert with the control of the quantum states of atoms or molecules provide the basis of the emerging quantum technologies of the 21st century such as quantum computing He

pioneered the production of entangled photon pairs using ultra-short laser pulses in non-linear waveguides He invented self-referencing spectral interferometry for measuring spectral amplitude and phase and so fully characterising pulses of light He also pioneered approaches to complete measurment of quantum systems that underpin these new technologies His leadership has produced key advances in practical and theoretical quantum optics and placed the UK at the forefront of the field

Maxwell MedalAndrei Starinets University of OxfordStarinets is an outstanding theoretical physicist whose work has been at the forefront of major developments that make use of the gaugendashgravity correspondence that arises in string theory and relates gauge quantum field theory to gravitational systems in one higher dimension His 2001 paper (with Son and Policastro)

transformed the understanding of how string theory might apply to real physics Before this paper string theory was viewed as a potential description of the properties of elementary particles and cosmology It is now viewed more broadly as an overarching theoretical framework for studying more general properties of quantum field theory with notable connections being made between gravitational systems in the presence of black holes and non-gravitational quantum critical systems strange metals and high-temperature superconductivity

Bragg MedalProf Philip Scott University of LeedsScott is a physics education researcher and teacher educator He was a leading member of the highly influential Childrenrsquos Learning in Science (CLIS) project based at the University of Leeds His work with CLIS involved close collaboration with physics teachers in examining student misconceptions

developing teaching sequences to address these and evaluating the impact of the sequences on student learning He is an academic who has never forgotten his roots in school teaching He has taken a leading role in a number of highly influential physics teacher development initiatives such as the CLIS professional development courses taking part in the Private Universe Project television programmes and the development of the Supporting Physics Teaching resources with the IOP

Kelvin MedalProf Jim Al-Khalili University of SurreyNot only is Al-Khalili a talented physicist with a profilic research output he is also a natural and highly gifted communicator equally at ease with the spoken or written word He has penned three bestselling popular science books about physics and a fourth on Arabic science which between them have been translated

into 13 different languages He has fronted a range of television documentaries on various aspects of physics and seven television series one of which was nominated for a BAFTA and two of which are due to be aired this year He has also played an influential role as a ldquocitizen physicistrdquo taking part in a wide range of popular cultural transmissions such as Desert Island Discs and is a regular contributor on BBC Radio 4rsquos In Our Time His commitment to public engagement with physics is evident in everything that he does He is an inspirational role model

Paterson MedalJochen GuckGuck is a leader in developing innovative photonic tools to test the relevance of living cell mechanical and optical properties for biological function and ultimately to impact clinical practice His optical stretcher is a key laser tool to trap and deform individual cells through the forces arising from

momentum transfer of light to their surface The aim is to develop a label-free high-throughput cell analysis method for cancer diagnosis infections and stem-cell sorting Pre-clinical tests of this approach for oral carcinomas have already been successful Another tool under development for marker-free characterisation of cellular processes is single-cell refractive index tomography which combines the advantages of electron microscopy and light microscopy

Moseley MedalGiovanna Tinetti University College LondonTinetti has spearheaded the work of characterising extrasolar planets which represents the next major advance in this new field in astrophysics She has played a crucial role in planning and interpreting the observations that have for the first time given us real insights into the molecular composition of exoplanets

She had a key role in establishing the idea of studying the infrared radiation blocked by a planet passing in front of its star as a means to perform molecular spectroscopy In three key papers Tinetti and others showed that water methane and carbon dioxide exist on exoplanets and their presence can be measured qualitatively in their atmospheres The work relies on her expertise in planetary and spectral simulations as well as her ability to interpret data taken with telescopes not really designed for this purpose This work is now driving the whole subject forward

Tabor MedalProf Andrew Turberfield University of OxfordTurberfield has pioneered the technique of holographic lithography for the fabrication of three-dimensional photonic crystals in collaboration with Robert Denning (Oxford Chemistry) He has developed new methods of using DNA to make nanostructures DNA can be used as a molecular glue as the fuel for molecular engines

and as a structural material in self-assembling nanostructures Building with DNA is like building a Legoreg model by designing the bricks such that they can only fit together in one way then putting them in a bag and shaking it Turberfield is using this technique to make synthetic molecular motors artificial crystals that act as ldquoscaffoldsrdquo in protein crystallography experiments and nanostructures such as DNA tetrahedra that have the promise of leading to revolutionary new methods of drug delivery

Rayleigh MedalProf Arkady Tseytlin Imperial College LondonTseytlin one of the leading figures in string theory pioneered the decipherment of its relations to the key structures of fundamental physics His work gives a firm basis for the understanding of gravitational dynamics from string theory and for the profound relation to the non-abelian gauge theories that are the basis of

understanding all the non-gravitational fundamental forces His pioneering work on the sigma model approach laid the foundation for a vast edifice of work on gravitational effective field theories providing a key contact between string theory and applications to known physics His discovery that the leading part of the tree-level open string theory effective action is the same as the ldquonon-linear electrodynamicsrdquo action has had many applications in studies of D-branes He has shown how to quantise strings in such backgrounds as the near-horizon region of a stack of many D-branes

Fuller citations for all of the 2011 award-winners can be viewed on the Institutersquos website at wwwioporg Visit the home page and click on ldquoAbout usrdquo and then on ldquoAwardsrdquo

6 profile

Sabyasachi (Shobo) Bhattacharya who was in the UK in May to give a lecture series organised by the IOP and the Indian Physics Association is used to being on the move

He divides his time between the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai New York University where hersquos a visit-ing scholar (he also has a home in the city and his wife is based there) and Cambridge where he recently spent a year as a visiting faculty at the Cavendish Laboratory to which he frequently returns Hersquos also on the Technology Advisory Council of BP ndash a role that takes him to many parts of the world ndash and on the edi-torial board of the IOPrsquos Reports on Progress in Physics

Interactions caught up with him while he was in London to deliver one of the Homi Bhabha Visiting Lectures ndash a series of physics lectures that he gave in seven British cities as part of an exchange scheme in which emi-nent physicists from India and from Great Britain and Ireland tour each otherrsquos countries in alternate years as speakers

Bhattacharya a distinguished pro-fessor of the TIFR and its former direc-tor is an experimental physicist best known for his work on vortex matter in superconductors and charge density waves His varied career has included research on liquid crystals glasses and colloidal systems underlain by the common theme of dynamics of disordered systems

After gaining his BSc and MSc in India he did a PhD in the US and undertook postdocs there He held senior positions in industrial labora-tories at Exxon and the NEC Research Institute in the US before joining the TIFR in 2002

Huge shortageHis talks to university academics and students had gone well though the schedule seemed ldquojam packedrdquo he says ldquoUniversally what has been good has been the response of the students In many cases they have asked me questions that needed

really detailed answers requiring time that I didnrsquot haverdquo

Throughout his tour he had encountered discussions about the growing emphasis on applied rather than fundamental research ldquoIt seems to me that the people who try to make this distinction are usually not professional scientistsrdquo he says arguing that good basic research can come out of work with an applied ori-entation and vice versa ldquoAt heart these are intellectual activities and you canrsquot compartmentalise them One has to have a balance but itrsquos best that scientists themselves have a say in what the funding is and what the policy isrdquo

Emphasising that his is an ldquoextreme minority viewrdquo in India he says that the countryrsquos problems are very different from those of the UK ldquoThe Indian government is putting an enormous amount of money into research The trouble is that we donrsquot have enough people engaged in research at a high level to make use of this very good funding situationrdquo

There is a huge shortage of good young people in research and teach-ing because for decades IT and finance have ldquosucked outrdquo a lot of people who would have gone into science or technology he says

There are 100 million people of

college age and the government wants 30 of them to go to univer-sity which would mean an enormous expansion of the sector he argues ldquoI was very surprised to learn that in this respect the UK faces qualitatively not dissimilar problemsrdquo he says

Having served on advisory com-mittees to the Indian government been an Industrial Councillor for the American Physical Society and served on a commission of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics it is perhaps sur-prising that it was ldquopeer pressurerdquo that drove him into physics

ldquoIn the late 1960s physics had a very high professional status Also my grandfather was a physicist and my great grandfather a mathemati-cian An academic career was almost expected of you and physics came very easily to me but if I were to do things over again I think Irsquod like to be a historian I regret that I didnrsquot ndash I would like there to be some way of doing both I now have a hobby Irsquom trying to work on the history of sci-ence policy in India

ldquoIn Bristol there is a cemetery where Rammohan Roy the father of modern liberal thought in India is buried I made a point of going to see his tomb as I feel I owe my education to him It was like a pilgrimagerdquo

Visitor has a global outlook

NEW FELLOWSAmnon Aharony Arzhang Ardavan Gordon Arthur Mete Atature Marco Borghesi Marco Buongiorno-Nardelli Mojca Cepic Alistair Cree Ian Fergusson Mark Field John Fothergill Patrick Gaydecki John Girkin Nigel Goldenfeld Ramin Golestanian Boris Gurevich Karen Holford Christophe Hollenstein John Stewart Kiltie Erich Kisi Gerhard Klimeck Martin Leahy Stuart Lindsay Wuming Liu Carl Loller Gordon Love Tariq Manzur Davide Mariotti Diane Mynors Thomas Nilsson Warren Pickett Dave Riley Simon Rowland Richard Seddon John Smith Michael Stone Sarah Thompson Ilya Tsvankin Richard Tuckett Stephen Wallace S P Walley M Ronald Watson Graham Williams Hiroshi Yamaguchi L H Yang

NEW MEMBERSJames Benstead Simon Brawley Philip Brown Fei Chen William Chislett Colm Devlin Stephen Dodd Thomas Dunstan Stuart Easton Christopher Eatwell Tharwat El-Sherbini Daniele Faccio James Ferguson Christopher Holland Samuel Jordan Peter Knief Pichaipillai Mani David Outram Manoj Saxena Ian Sillett Xu Song Tomas Stanton Michael Waller-Bridge Christian Young

IN MEMORIAMRichard Austin Anderson (Australia) John Balfe John Down S A Ferris (Royston) George William Fogarty (Belfast) Basil Foster Frank Glover (Reading) James Trevor Griffiths (Leicester) Dennis Healey (St Austell) Alex Hope Frank Keeble R S King (Chatham) Clive Morley (Reading) William Rosser Richard Shadbolt John Titheridge Edward Underhill (Havant)

MEMBER OFFERl Online subscription prize drawAnna Jordan from Cranleigh in Surrey is Mayrsquos prize-draw winner She receives a 4 GB data stick For your chance to win a data stick pay your membership subscription online at httpmembersioporgmembersioporg

notices

Heather Pinnell meets Shobo Bhattacharya a physicist touring the UK

The next Interactions will be published in September

INTJuly11p06v4indd 2 23611 094845

Visit wwwioporgcalendar for further information about the listed eventsjuly 2011

Schools and Colleges Lecture Tour From X-rays to Antimatter ndash the Science of Seeing Inside Your BodyEducation DepartmentJCoSS New Barnet Hertfordshire1 July

IOP Meeting on Detectors for Particle PhysicsHigh Energy Particle Physics GroupRutherford Appleton Laboratory Didcot1 July 1100 am

IOP Yorkshire Branch Teachers DayYorkshire BranchE C Stoner Building University of Leeds2 July

The View from Saturn Images from the Cassini SpacecraftLondon and South East BranchWilliam Penney Theatre AWE Aldermaston4 July 730 pm

Icemelters a Collection of Activities Using IceTeacher NetworkCramlington Learning Village Highburn Northumberland5 July 400 pm

Rocket Launchers Make and TakeTeacher NetworkNewport High School Newport Shropshire5 July 400 pm

Drag Racers Make and TakeTeacher NetworkAlban Church of England Academy Great Barford Bedfordshire5 July 415 pm

Shocked and StunnedTeacher NetworkHorsforth School Leeds6 July 400 pm

UK Semiconductors 2011 Conference and ExhibitionSemiconductor Physics GroupEndcliffe Village University of Sheffield6ndash7 July

MC10 International Conference on Materials ChemistryPolymer Physics GroupUniversity of Manchester7 July

REMS at Home a MiscellanyLondon and South East Branch76 Portland Place London W17 July

Games LabTeacher NetworkSt Maryrsquos School Mount Battenhall Worcester7 July 12 noon

Summer 2011 Physics UpdateEducation DepartmentH H Wills Physics Laboratory University of Bristol8ndash10 July

PetroPhase 2011Liquids and Complex Fluids GroupImperial College London South Kensington Campus10ndash14 July

Variety 2Teacher NetworkHighfields School Matlock Derbyshire11 July 1100 am

100 Years of Superconductivity 25 Years of High Temperature SuperconductivitySuperconductivity GroupCavendish Laboratory Cambridge11ndash12 July

The 9th International Conference on Damage Assessment of StructuresApplied Mechanics GroupSt Annersquos College Oxford11ndash13 July

Summer Dinner IOP East Anglia BranchEast Anglia BranchSt Catharinersquos College Cambridge16 July 730 pm

International Conference and Exhibition on High Temperature Electronics NetworkMaterials and Characterisation GroupSt Catherinersquos College Oxford18ndash20 July

Summer Physics Booster CourseEducation DepartmentCharterhouse School Godalming Surrey18ndash22 and 25ndash29 July

Fukushima Lessons LearntNuclear Industry GroupThe Centre Birchwood Park Warrington19 July 630 pm

The Antikythera MechanismSouth West BranchMercure White Hart Hotel Salisbury19 July 700 pm

Coherence and Control in Chemistry Faraday Discussion 153Molecular Physics GroupQuantum Information Quantum Optics and Quantum Control GroupUniversity of Leeds25ndash27 July

Stimulating Physics Day Summer SchoolTeacher NetworkNational Science Learning Centre University of York26ndash29 July

august 2011

Rutherford Centennial Conference on Nuclear PhysicsConferences DepartmentUniversity of Manchester8ndash12 August

REMS Visit Buckingham PalaceLondon and South East BranchBuckingham Palace London SW118 August 1100 am

Stimulating Physics Day Summer SchoolTeacher NetworkWorcester College Oxford25ndash28 August

REMS Walk Capital Ring Walk 9 ndash Greenford to South KentonLondon and South East BranchGreenford Station Middlesex27 August 1100 am

sEptEmbEr 2011

European Medical Physics and Engineering Conference 2011Institute of Physics in IrelandTrinity College Dublin1 September 900 am

14th European Conference on Applications of Surfaces and Interface Analysis (ECASIA)Conferences DepartmentCardiff City Hall4ndash9 September

EuroCVD 18Institute of Physics in IrelandActons Hotel Kinsale County Cork4ndash9 September

EMAG 2011Electron Microscopy and Analysis GroupUniversity of Birmingham6ndash9 September

Photonics Ireland Conference 2011The Grand Hotel Malahide County DublinInstitute of Physics in Ireland7ndash9 September

Physical Aspects of Polymer SciencePolymer Physics GroupUniversity of Surrey Guildford12ndash14 September

Sensors amp their Applications XVIInstrument Science and Technology GroupClarion Hotel Cork12ndash14 September

Events requiring registration are marked with an

eventsEditor Heather Pinnell Production Editor Alison Gardiner Art Director Andrew Giaquinto Institute of Physics 76 Portland Place London W1B 1NT UK Tel +44 (0)20 7470 4800 fax +44 (0)20 7470 4991 e-mail interactionsioporg web httpmembersioporg

honorary fellows8Prof Dame Carole Jordan University of OxfordJordanrsquos work has centred on the use of X-ray and UV spectra as plasma diagnostics Throughout her career she worked on the interpretation of solar spectra and was the first to identify the atomic or molecular origins of many emission lines Later she transferred her solar techniques to the analysis of the spectra of cool stars She has been editor of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) first female president of the RAS first vice-president (science) for the IOP and was twice on the IOP Council

Prof Ian Halliday president European Science FoundationHalliday a particle theorist by background has been a key figure in UK and international physics for many years in his roles as chief executive of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council and of the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance as well as on many other trans-national committees He played a key role in reversing the decline in funding for particle physics and astronomy and took the UK into the European Southern Observatory

Prof Jon Ogborn Institute of Education University of LondonOgborn directed two of the most innovative school physics education projects of his era the Nuffield Advanced Physics Project and Advancing Physics which have influenced physics teaching at home and abroad He inspires confidence and generates enthusiasm among a wide range of practitioners and has contributed at the highest level to education research teacher education and curriculum development in the sciences

Prof Michael Payne University of CambrdgePayne has made an outstanding personal contribution to building the Institutersquos membership among students In 1998 he recruited all Cambridge natural sciences students into the IOP which involved collecting all the necessary data and most importantly paying the full subscriptions from his share of royalty payments from his CASTEP software package He went on doing so until free e-membership for students was introduced recruiting about 4000 people in this time

Prof Andrei Geim Prof Konstantin Novoselov University of ManchesterGeim (top left) and Novoselov (below left) have a remarkable scientific record the hallmark of which is their exceptional experimental ability in condensed matter physics They have produced many key results in mesoscopic superconductivity and sub-atomic movements of magnetic domain walls Their findings have also led to ldquoGeckordquo tape a microfabricated adhesive based on the climbing mechanism of geckos Much of their recent research has centred around two-dimensional atomic crystals In 2004 their group at the University of Manchester extracted graphene ndash a single atomic layer of carbon ndash from graphite and then measured the many remarkable physical properties of this material In 2010 they were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for this work

Honorary fellowship of the Institute will be conferred on six people at the IOPrsquos Awards Dinner in October ndash only 40 others are currently honorary fellows Full citations are on the IOPrsquos website at wwwioporg The six are

INTJuly11p1

INTJuly11p2

INTJuly11p3

INTJuly11p4

INTJuly11p5

INTJuly11p6

INTJuly11p7

INTJuly11p8