Blog Post Index
How to make a perfect cheese sandwich
Way back in 2003 the British Cheese Board asked me if I could work out scientifically the optimum amount of cheese to put in a cheese sandwich. Well, I did, by measuring the concentration of aroma released when I ate sandwiches made with different thicknesses of...
Carl Linnaeus and Joseph Banks: Sex, scandals and science
My home village of Blackheath in Australia's beautiful Blue Mountains boasts many beautiful gardens, none more beautiful than the fifty year-old rhododendron gardens, maintained by an enthusiastic group of volunteers who are mostly older than the gardens themselves....
How To Win an Ig Nobel Prize
A talk for the Bristol Scientific Club. a venerable institution founded 135 years ago by Lord Rayleigh. Great fun among some great scientists, one of whom (Sir Michael Berry) is a fellow Ig Nobel laureate! I'll put a link up for the talk after I have delivered it....
Working Towards a More Humanistic Society
Very excited to have been invited to speak at the Eighth International Conference on Humanistic Buddhism. I am not a Buddhist per se, but I have great sympathy with many of its aims, and especially with the all-permeating idea of interconnectedness. I will be talking...
The Future of Food: An Integrated Global Challenge
A talk delivered at the meeting "Food Futures in the Anthropocene" (University of Tasmania, November 7-10 (2020)). One of a number of talks and articles where I have been trying to bring people's attention to the importance of interconnectedness between the many...
Catastrophes Small and Large: From Biscuit Dunking to our Global Future
I appeared on the front page of Wikipedia today (April 7th 2021). “Did you know?” asked the editors “that Len Fisher won the 1999 Ig Nobel Prize for physics for his research on the optimal way to dunk a biscuit?” You may or may not have known this. Certainly the story...
So You Want To Be A Writer?
This piece that I wrote some time ago for Psychology Today bears repeating, especially given the number of questions (usually the same ones) that I get from aspiring writers. I sympathise; I was in the same position myself once. An article like this would have helped...
Virtual food
The Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery is my favourite indulgence - old friends, good wine, great food. But this year it has to be virtual, and here I will keep a running diary of events to share. Enjoy! The header picture is from last year. That's me holding the...
Casimir and me
This mini story is about me and my last (maybe really my last) scientific paper. It is also a story of how science really works - through people, rather than structures or organizations or committees. It started with Twitter, which is a major way that I keep in touch...
Pursuing Power vs Pursuing Understanding: The Root Cause of Society’s Problems
Very proud to have been invited to do a long "Heroes of Mother Earth" podcast interview, where I argued that the problems the world is facing are interconnected in such a way that sudden large changes are not only inevitable, but also largely unpredictable. I talked...
143. Mercury, Shakespeare and me
Very proud to have been awarded a prize in the Royal Australian Chemical Institute's competition for Stories from the Periodic Table. Here is my winning entry: Mercury, Shakespeare and me Mercury is the only metal that is liquid at room temperature, and it exerts an...
Self-interest is blocking progress on global problems
The natural environment is a web of connected systems. Change one element and you impact on other elements. The human impact on earth systems is becoming increasingly obvious. In my latest programme for Australian ABC Radio National's Science Show...
The Brexit Minister for Food Security
The Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery is my favourite annual indulgence, where I meet many old friends from the foodie world and let fly with my thoughts and opinions on the theme of the meeting. The theme for 2019 was Food and Power, which gave me the opportunity...
The world needs a new Integrated Global Systems Science to survive
This was my entry to a NESTA-sponsored competition on what we may hope for in the way of scientific advances and developments in the next ten years. Didn't make the final ten, sadly, but I hold by every word. I argue the need for a new Integrated Global Systems...
The World Needs Complexity Thinking
I was proud to be a finalist (14 finalists out of 2702 entrants from 122 countries; https://globalchallenges.org/en/our-work/the-new-shape-prize/finalists) in the recent Global Challenges New Shape competition , which sought suggestions for new approaches to the...
Equations in the media
I just came across a link to a segment of the BBC Radio 4 programme "More or Less", where I debated with Simon Singh the value of equations in the media. "Debated" is really not the right word, since we were on the same side when it came to the way that the media...
142. A mad magnet tale
This story of the generation of an ultra-strong magnetic field (https://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/nanotechnology/magnetic-field-record-set-with-a-bang-1200-tesla) and the subsequent disaster reminds me of a story that I was told by a very prominent...
141. A world made of blueberries
My good friend and cooleague (cool colleague) Anders Sandberg has calculated what would happen if the world suddenly turned into blueberries. I offer it as an example of how scientists think; one that might be used to help schoolchildren, and even beginning university...
Chickens’ Guts and Chefs’ Tools
Art imitating nature: how chefs treat seeds in just the same ways that seed-eating birds have been doing for millions of years: https://youtu.be/RMuAx4XVa08 My talk at the 2018 Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. Start at 2'50" if you want to...
140. The power of curiosity: burning down houses and blowing up schools.
Polymathic scientist George Whitesides, consultant to many commercial ventures, has written a beautiful essay on the power of curiosity: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/anie.201800684 It begins with the story of how, as a child, he had heard that...
Life, REF, and the half-loaf principle
One of my favourite writers is the Russian-born Englishman S.J. "Skid" Simon. Unless you are a bridge player, you have probably never heard of him, although he wrote many murder mysteries in the period before the Second World War, the best-known being "A Bullet in the...
Let’s share the thrill and exhilaration of discovery!
A piece recorded for ABC Radio National after the death of Billy Graham, evangelist for Christianity, but before the death of Stephen Hawking, evangelist for science. What more can we scientists do to share the thrill and exhilaration of discovery?...
The science of toffee apples
In 2005 I gave a talk at the Royal Institution on the science of toffee apples. It was, of course, timed for Guy Fawkes night! Recently a few people have asked whether they might have a copy of the script. So for them, and anyone else who is dying to know more about...
Communicating science: a slightly jaundiced view
After 25 years communicating science to different audiences, I finally put it all together in a talk delivered to staff and students at the University of Bristol's physics department. It covers Stephen Hawking's role, talking to politicians, dealing with the media,...
A scientist looks at philosophy
My first (and only) genuine philosophy article published in a genuine philosophy journal. Twenty-five years on, I am still quite proud of it! All about models and what they really mean (and don't mean). A scientist looks at philosophy IMAGE: Wikimedia Commons
The logical way to cut a round Christmas cake
Sir Francis Galton was a Victorian explorer, statistician, student of intelligence and heredity, and all round polymath. In his role as a statistician he came up with a way to analyze the power of prayer by arguing that royalty, being prayed for so frequently in the...
139. Why are the wealthy so wealthy and the poor so poor?
The increasing disparity of wealth in the world is a huge concern to all of us who believe in fairness and equitability. But why does it happen, and what can we do about it? In my latest broadcast for the Australian ABC Radio National Science Show, I reveal how the...
The Insanity of Under-Exertion of the Brain
My latest Science Show broadcast for Australian ABC Radio National, where I argue that lazy and habitual thought processes are causing untold damage. Here is the link:...
World octopus day: What the octopus can teach us about hunting for bargains
October 9th is World Octopus Day, believe it or not. Even more unbelievable, the octopus can teach us quite a bit about the best decision strategies when it comes to hunting for bargains, as I reveal in this blog that was first published in Psychology Today in 2014....
Let’s invite Sarah Palin to present the Nobel Prizes
My opinion piece in the San Francisco Chronicle (http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Sarah-Palin-should-hand-out-the-Nobel-medals-12256755.php). OK, it’s tongue-in-cheek, but there is a serious point here for communicating about science. Too often...
138. What is a Geiger?
Today, September 30th, is the anniversary of Hans Geiger's birth. Geiger was a student of Ernest Marsden at the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge, Shortly after he had joined, Marsden decided that it was time for him to get his hands dirty and try a "little...
Systemic Risk: What it Means and What we can Do
Some basic references for a talk that I delivered to the Aon Benfield conference “Risk Re-imagined” (Gold Coast, Australia, September 18-20 (2017)) IRGC Concept Note “Preparing for Future Catastrophes”...
137. Creepy objects
After my radio broadcast on the relics of scientists in museums around the world (http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/preserved-scientists/8624266), I received a number of suggestions for creepy additions. So I'm starting a blog here on creepy...
136. Brilliant bacteria
Sometimes a scientific paper comes out that generates a gasp of admiration at first sight. That is true of a paper just out in Physical Review Letters “Nonlinear self-action of light through biological suspensions" (Anna Bezryadina, Zhigang Chen (San Francisco State...
Making the best decisions
Several years ago I was invited to write a book chapter on how we can make the best decisions in our complex, interconnected world. I wrote the chapter, aimed at a general audience and containing some interesting stories about how Benjamin Franklin, Charles Darwin,...
Units of measurement
The calving of a huge iceberg from Antarctica is a serious issue in the context of global warming, but has also sparked an ongoing debate on the best unit of measurement to describe its size. "The size of Delaware" screamed the initial, U.S.-based news sources. "Well,...
Global warming and the global food landscape: why we need to maintain diversity.
The video of my talk to the 2017 Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery is now available on YouTube. complete with questions, comments and the occasional joke. Pity I kept mispronouncing TAnzania as TanzAnia; maybe a side-effect of speaking to such a distinguished...
What is a jerk?
Even some physicists are surprised to learn that "jerk" is a scientific measure. That's right! A "jerk" is the time rate of change of acceleration, or (equivalently) the third derivative of distance with respect to time. Which reminds me of a nice story by my friend...
135. Why is science communication failing?
Monday, July 10, 2017: Today professional science communicators are meeting in Sheffield to share experiences and develop their craft. My good friend Peter Broks has set the cat among the pigeons by posing the question "Has science communication failed?" I would put...
My recent radio broadcasts
I live a divided life, spending half the year in Australia and the other half in the UK. While in Australia, I recorded several programmes for ABC Radio National on various aspects of the science in our lives. They are now all available on podcast. Enjoy! 1. Science...
134. Flying Blind Into the Future
Dramatic, unforeseen change is an increasing feature of our interconnected world. But how can we prepare for it? This is a blog summary of a feature article due to appear in "The Actuary" (July edition), and on which I will be expanding in a keynote talk to the 2017...
133. How Linneaus came to London
May 23rd was Carl Linnaeus’s 320th birthday. When he died in 1778, his effects were put up for sale. Joseph Banks, then head of the Linnean Society, promptly bought his notebooks and specimens on behalf of the society.
132. A great loo story
(If any readers can tell me the origin of this, I would love to know!) Academics, and especially critics, have long been associated with “high” culture. It is only within my lifetime that their attention has increasingly been drawn towards “low” culture, with Clive...
131. The rewards of science communication
Long-time readers of these annals may recall that, when I first used the physics of biscuit dunking as a way to show how scientists think about problems. I received the following letter from a 12-year-old schoolboy: The boy's name was Chao Quan. I wrote back to him,...
130. Marching for science and marching for tax
Saturday, April 22nd saw scientists marching in the streets in over 500 cities around the world. Just the week before, another march took place in Washington; a march to decry Donald Trump's failure to release his tax returns as promised. My op-ed submitted to the...
Idiots’ Guide to Vegetables
Commissioned by the Guardian a while ago, but then spiked on the basis that it was too "sciencey" [sic]. I wonder what else they expected from a scientist? At any rate, here is my guide to the quirkier side of vegetables (from fresh and juicy to saggy and sorry) for a...
129. On prosopagnosia and apophenia: recognizing patterns in faces and society
My latest Ockham's Razor talk for Australian ABC Radio National. How some of us can't recognize facial patterns, but how most of us fall for imaginary patterns in the real world, and what we can do about it. Here is the link to the podcast:...
Superbowl for politicians
Op-ed submitted to Boston Globe after Patriots' Superbowl LI win. Pity they didn't take it, but here it is anyway. The message that it contains is rather important; like footballers, politicians need to adapt quickly to circumstances! When wide receiver Julian Edelman...
128. Penile frostbite: an unexpected hazard of jogging.
The following wonderful letter appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine forty years ago. If the IgNobel Prizes had existed then, it would surely have been a leading candidate for the medicine prize. Who says that scientists don't have a sense of humor?! Penis...
18. The UNscientific method. Part 1.
(Feb 3, 2017) I temporarily removed this early post because it seemed to be attracting spambots. Now re-posting. Enjoy! I am often asked the question “Is there a scientific method?” If the question means “Is there just one method that all scientists accept and use by...
127. How can we cooperate? A new lesson from the bees
The world is rapidly going down the road of competition rather than cooperation. In doing so, as I have shown in previous posts and in my book Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life, its citizens face the deadly dilemmas exposed by game theory – in...
126. The ethics of game theory: Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby & Mrs Bedonebyasyoudid
I avoid political commentary on this website , but in the current climate (31st January, 2017) I believe that it is very important for as many of us as possible to look dispassionately at what is happening and try to understand what is going on below the surface...
125. The Chinese tea ceremony
The Chinese New Year, which began this year on January 28th, is a big deal in Sydney, which has a large and vibrant Chinese community, some of whose families go back to the gold rush days of the 1850s. As part of the celebrations, the Art Gallery of New South Wales...
My career in poetry
I am stimulated to write this post by the news that the “celebrated American poet Joseph Charles McKenzie” has composed a poem to celebrate Donald Trump’s inauguration. The poem contains the immortal lines “With purpose and strength he came down from his tower To...
Awkward Objects
If ever I had combined my interest in science with that in mediaeval history, this wonderful-sounding conference, taking place in Helsinki this April, would have provided the ideal vehicle. Its topic is “awkward objects” associated with the body; “including, but not...
124. Trump, Russia and Lysenko: A cautionary tale
Submitted to Washington Post just before Christmas 2016. Nearly made it, but eventually missed out, The message for science is sadly stark. The U.S. should learn from Russian history “Are you now, or have you ever been, a climate scientist?” Donald Trump’s recent...
Vale Leonard Cohen: that’s how it goes.
Leonard Cohen has died. Perhaps he should have received a Nobel Prize, or shared one with Bob Dylan, because he certainly produced some of the most memorable descriptions of the human condition to be found anywhere. The one that sticks in my mind is this: Everybody...
Food books for food enthusiasts
Do you have a passion for food and cooking? Do you want access and guidance on the best in culinary literature? Former molecular biologist Matt Cockerill has an answer, in the form of a new web-based project called 1000 Cookbooks (www.1000cookbooks.com). As a start,...
Rosetta and Bali: Coincidence or conspiracy?
Dateline: November 2nd, 2016. Staying on Bali, and idly glancing at the right-hand NASA topographic map of Bali from space, the similarity to the left-hand image of comet P67 taken from the Rosetta spacecraft suddenly struck me. Yes, I know that I have reflected...
123. What’s that smell?
What’s that smell? A school playground joke from my childhood concerns a new deodorant called “vanish”. It makes you invisible, so that no one can see where the smell is coming from. But how can we seriously get rid of bad smells? One way, which makes the...
122. Are there ghosts?
In an earlier post (https://lenfisherscience.com/98-necessary-mysteries/) I wrote about necessary mysteries – concepts and ideas that are beyond our direct experience, but which scientists have been forced to accept in order to make sense of that experience. Note that...
121. Popular mechanics and popular maths
I must have been just nine or ten years old when I discovered the American magazine “Popular Mechanics” in our local library. It was the stuff of dreams. My real world, where my parents could not afford to buy me a bicycle, let alone own a car themselves, was replaced...
IgNobel or Nobel – which has more value?
It may sound ridiculous to argue that a spoof IgNobel Prize could ever have more value than an actual Nobel. Of course, when it comes to real science, the Nobels are still the pinnacle. But perhaps, as I pointed out in this interview on the BBC World Service recorded...
120. Joseph Priestley’s imaginative political justification for the pursuit of pure science.
A great deal of nonsense is currently being spouted by people who believe that the days of unfettered “fundamental,” “pure,” “blue-sky” research are over – or, at least, that they ought to be, and that scientists should come out into the “real world,” whatever that...
Are you over-exerting your brain?
In the days when I was an enthusiast for competition bridge, I read a book by the British writer Victor Mollo which featured a character called The Hideous Hog. One sentence from that book, describing the Hog’s excuse for making a mistake, has always stuck in my mind...
Rabelais in the modern world
Rabelais's rumbustious romp with the brief title The Heroic Deeds of Gargantua and Pantagruel was written in the sixteenth century, with the first part being written in 1532. I am lucky enough to own a limited edition illustrated by the Australia artist Francis J....
119. Science in the real world: predicting society
If you think that science, and scientific thinking, have little to do with the rough-and-tumble of the real world, think again – and take a look at this wonderful paper by a group of psychologists and mathematicians from the Cornell-Princeton-Yale triangle...
118. Gassing on about neon
A recent article provides an exciting glimpse into one way that scientists think, although you might not think it is so exciting at first glimpse. Let the scientists speak for themselves: Neon is an abundant element in the atmosphere, but it is much scarcer on Earth...
What Nepal really needs to do about landslip disasters
July, 2016 After hearing a well-informed talk by the experienced Nepal road engineer Bleddyn Griffiths about his experience of the Nepal earthquake disaster, I suggested that we write a joint letter about both the science and the realities, which are linked in a more...
On the Fat-Headedness of Crowds
July 25th, 2016 The result of the recent UK referendum on whether to stay in or to leave Europe has come as a shock to many of us. More than one correspondent has asked me “I thought there was this thing called group intelligence which said that, the larger the group,...
Letter to “Times,” Thursday June 16 (2016), re food and Brexit.
At Theodore Zeldin's suggestion, supported and promoted by Paul Levy, here is a letter that I and 59 others signed, with food-related reasons for Britain to stay firmly in the EU. Sir, As people engaged in the food world, concerned about the cultural, nutritional and...
The Great Barrier Reef is in great danger
Here is the self-explanatory text of a letter sent to the Sydney Morning Herald, but not accepted for publication. Perhaps I should have been rougher, because the original draft referred to the exposed backside as being in need of a thorough kicking. "The Government...
Brain cutlets, anyone?
In celebration of the “offal” theme at the 2016 Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, here is the wonderful brain cutlet story from Lawrence Durrell’s Prospero’s Cell, a semi-fictional diary of his time on Corfu. The Count is “Count D” (probably an invented character,...
117. Global Governance of Slowly Developing Catastrophic Risks
Early in 2015 I was invited, together with co-authors from the International Risk Governance Council, to write a review on the above topic for a special issue of the journal Ecological Economics. The referees liked the writing, but wanted us to add more economics...
116. Einstein’s sock (continued)
My latest 15 min radio broadcast in the Ockham's Razor series begins with the story of why Einstein decided not to wear socks (see Mini Story #7), but goes on to encompass how we can make the best decisions in our complex world and how Governments and big business are...
115. A New Theory of Vacuum Cleaning
It is said that Pierre Curie could never enter his own laboratory while an experiment was in progress, because his body had become so radioactive that his mere presence discharged the sensitive electrometers. It was while pondering this story that I came up with my...
My submission to the House of Commons inquiry on science communication
PERSONAL BACKGROUND I am a practising scientist, writer and broadcaster who has spent the last two decades working to make science more accessible and more a part of our culture by showing how scientists think about everyday problems, from the trivial to the profound...
Books To Read Before Going To University
Books To Read Before University Thursday, April 14th, 2016 The Times Education Supplement and the Times Higher Education Supplement have combined to produce a feature article on books that students should read before going to university...
114. Mastering complexity – I’m going to give it a try
In story fourteen I argued that science, like sex, thrives on diversity. I quoted from Peter Medawar, and the quote is worth repeating: There is no such thing as a Scientific Mind. Scientists are people of very dissimilar temperaments doing different things in very...
Are you a polymath? What’s your Erdös-Bacon-Sabbath number?
Here is my article for the Times Higher Education Supplement on how I worked out the closeness of my creative links to the mathematician Paul Erdös, the actor Kevin Bacon, and the heavy metal music group Black Sabbath, and found myself to be in the same category as...
113. How and why did Galileo calculate the dimensions of the roof of Hell?
In my latest broadcast for Australian ABC Radio's "Ockham's Razor" programme, I reveal how (and why) Galileo calculated the dimensions of the roof of Dante's Hell, and how this led to his discovery of the laws of mechanics that engineers use to this day (Hint: He...
Food and Desire
Here are the talk notes and accompanying Powerpoint Slides for the keynote talk that I gave on "Food and Desire" at the second Biennial Dublin Gastronomy Symposium (DGS) that (3-4 June 2014, Dublin Institute of Technology). It was a wonderful meeting, full of food and...
112. If you want to survive a lightning strike, be a redhead
A picture has been circulating (http://gizmodo.com/this-bison-was-struck-by-lightning-and-emerged-ugly-but-1751814626) of a bison that survived a lighting strike. The thing that struck me particularly was that the bison had red hair. “So what?” you might ask. The...
111. Let’s dance – nano style
How can we better integrate science and the arts? Drama seems a fairly obvious medium for integration, and Michael Frayn used it effectively with his play “Copenhagen,” which dramatized the 1941 meeting between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. Dance is a lot less...
110. My granddaughter’s first experiment
We bought my 11 year-old granddaughter a chemistry set for Christmas. It was her idea, not ours, maybe stimulated by the fact that both of her parents are scientists. We chose one where she could do plenty of colour change reactions; in fact, the first experiment in...
The real dangers of Australia
Many of our European friends have expressed apprehension at the idea of visiting Australia on account of the ferocious sharks, poisonous snakes, spiders and jellyfish, etc. But the real problems lie elsewhere: Some birds laugh at you: Others look sideways...
Where did “Rock-Paper-Scissors” originate? Well, Nature started it all.
I recently had an inquiry from a Russian website wanting to know where the game "Rock, Paper, Scissors" originated. Probably they asked me because I had written a best-selling book "Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life," which was in fact not about the...
109. What a coincidence! What, a coincidence?
I was just about to write something on the subject of coincidence when, coincidentally, I came across a post by Steve Strogatz (@Stevenstrogatz) on the subject of coincidence. It’s a very important part of scientific thinking, because distinguishing coincidence from...
108. A note on teleology – you were born to read this.
Johannes Kepler was a great scientist who fathomed the laws of planetary motion. Yet even he was susceptible to the sort of inverse logic that still traps many people today. It is called teleology - explanation by reference to some purpose, end, goal, or function....
107. Terrorism and the refugee crisis
The journal Nature has been taking a strong interest in terrorism and the refugee crisis, even publishing an article of mine on the latter (see https://lenfisherscience.com/avoid-major-disasters-by-welcoming-minor-change/). As a leading scientific journal, Nature has...
Australian politicians need to understand how science can REALLY be made profitable
The Australian Government is seriously considering radical changes to research funding where the major criterion would be the potential applications of a project, rather than its scientific value and rigour. This crazy idea, so intuitively appealing to politicians,...
Will Turnbull reverse the cuts?
Nov 4, 2015 Here is the text of an open letter (submitted to Sydney Morning Herald but unpublished) to Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, drafted by me on behalf of the Royal Society of New South Wales. In a recent speech, Turnbull promised to “invest in...
Avoid major disasters by welcoming minor change
November 4, 2015 My World View article “Avoid major disasters by welcoming minor change” has now been published in Nature (Vol.527, p.9). Here is the link: http://www.nature.com/news/avoid-major-disasters-by-welcoming-minor-change-1.18718 The full article cannot be...
My defense of basic science in the Wall Street Journal
Following Matt Ridley's ill-informed claim in the Wall Street Journal ((“The Myth of Basic Science,” Review, Oct. 24) that basic science doesn't really need government support because most of it emerges from technology anyway, I essayed a rebuttal with my friend and...
A heavyweight philosophical encounter
I was never a particular admirer of the Oxford philosopher A.J.Ayer, but after coming across this story I may be beginning to change my mind:
The tale of a clever (and vengeful) electric eel
Electric eels are clever sods. Horizontal strands of nervous tissue set up a situation where the head becomes positive, the tail negative, and a potential difference of hundreds of volts in between. A recent paper in Current Biology (cf...
How quickly can Zombies spread?
Here's how quickly zombies could spread across the United States (http://mattbierbaum.github.io/zombies-usa/). It's just a quirky model for the spreading of different types of infection, and you can run the simulation for yourself. Think how good it would be if...
106. Could consciousness be thought of as a state of matter?
Can consciousness be thought of as a state of matter? According to physicist Max Tegmark from MIT (see https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/why-physicists-are-saying-consciousness-is-a-state-of-matter-like-a-solid-a-liquid-or-a-gas-5e7ed624986d), thinking about...
What scientists need to know about communicating with journalists
Several colleagues have drawn my attention to a blog by Pete Warden on how scientists should talk to journalists (http://petewarden.com/2015/09/27/how-to-talk-to-journalists/). Having had the experience on many occasions, and having worked out my own set of rules, I...
The birth of something small
“Whatever happened to colloid science? Has it been totally supplanted by the young upstart known as nanoscience? Or is it still with us, lurking in the background, perhaps even preparing for a comeback?” In my Chemistry World article The Birth of Something Small...