The Nobel prize for physics will be announced on Tuesday October 7, 2025. As a warm up exercise in preparing for this event, I will...

This is a review of David Nasaw 's biography of Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-born American industrialist and philanthropist. At 880...

Millionaires (this includes billionaires) who dropped out of high school or college are often invited to universities to speak to...

The last stop this summer was Lancaster, UK, for a conference (see if you can find me in the photo) on low temperature physics, which...

This post is a review of the book The Woman Who Ran AIIMS . AIIMS is the All India Institute of Medical Sciences located in Delhi. It is...

This post is about two recent visits I made to academic campuses in places somewhat exotic. Malta Malta is an archipelago of five...

This is a review of the The Strangest Man by Graham Farmelo . It is the biography of Paul Dirac, one of the pioneers of quantum physics, the youngest ever theoretical physicist to win the Nobel prize (at 31 years of age), and according to Stephen Hawking, the greatest English physicist since Newton (I would place Maxwell and Faraday as close competitors for the accolade). The book is deeply researched and well written and has won several prizes, including the L.A. Times Book

An intellectual, said Aldous Huxley, is someone who has found something more interesting than sex. I would like to revise that opinion: I...

First an apology for missing last week: the piece was ready, but I was in a place with spotty internet, so I could not upload. For this...

Like most of us - maybe more than most of us - I often have gripes about technology. This post reproduces a piece that I wrote many years...

On the recent trip to Italy, talk arose of Ettore Majorana, the Italian scientist whose contributions are now considered fundamental in...

As promised - this post is about Florence. Galileo The city houses the Villa Galileo , where the scientist was imprisoned and spent the...

This post is about my visit to Pisa, where I gave a talk on Friday at the university. My next commitment is a visit today to the VIRGO ...

This post is a review of The Infamous Boundary: Seven Decades of Controversy in Quantum Physics by David Wick. The book is intended to...

This is a post mainly for postdocs joining my group, but may be useful for hires in any organization. I have mentored about 10 postdocs...

This post is a review of A Dominant Character: The Radical Science and Restless Politics of J. B. S. Haldane by Samanth Subramanian....

This post is a review of Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland by George Gamow . Though first published in 1940, it still remains a classic of...

A favorite pastime of physicists - like that of sports fans or politics enthusiasts - is comparing prominent figures in their discipline...

This is a review of the book Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson . Some readers might find the subject contentious, especially given the...

This post is a short review of the book Einstein's Universe by Nigel Calder . The book came out in 1979, celebrating the 100th...