Science and the humanities
the lifetime of a 2 MeV mass, 200 In August 1603, Federico Cesi, play an important role in fostering GeV energy particle is increased from a wealthy Umbrian family, and philosophy and philology in Italy, 100,000-fold. three companions founded TAc- work which has gone on to leave The target calorimeter also has cademia dei Lincei' (lynx) to discov its mark further afield. to be as short as possible. It uses er and investigate the 'great theatre After having been on view at tungsten plates instrumented with of Nature'. After a demise in 1651, several venues in Italy, an exhibi scintillating fibre ribbons, 200 mi the present National Academy was tion 'Federico Cesi and the Founda crons thick (May issue, page 29) set up in 1874, and has gone on to tion of the Accademia dei Lincei', for frequent sampling, but with the sampling material comprising only •i 6% of the total thickness. Down stream, a simple neutral decay L o 1 U K 1 A spectrometer is followed by a trig ger calorimeter. The target and El TT Jk. 'j—j 1ST trigger calorimeters were in place X) IM O S* 1O I for the test run, but not the spec INTORNO ALLE MACCHIE SOLARI trometer. E LORO ACCIDENT!
C0MPRESE IN T RE LETTERE SCRITTE ALL' ILLVSTIUSSI NfO SIGNOR MARCO VELSERI LINCE O ... D Y V M V I R O D'AVGVSTA CONSIGUERO DI SVA MAESTA CESARJtA
: DAL SI G N 0 R GALILEO GALILEI LINCEO
Nobil Fiorcnrino, Filofofo,e Matcmttko Pr'mario del$ D. COSIMO II. GRAN DVCA DI TOSCANA. Si aggiungopo ncl fine k Lcttcrc, e Difquifizioni del finto A£c!le. IN RO MA , ApprcfTo Giacomg Mafcardi. MP CXI II. . CO AT LICEN 2 A DM' SFYbRIQ&I. Galileo's first paper for the Accademia del Lincei (1613). CERN Courier, July/August 1988 21 Robert Wilson - 'where there is beauty, there is humanness'. Rene Thorn - 'hard' and 'soft' sciences Italiano.per gli Studi Filosofici, Na ples, introduced the session by pointing out the common roots of intellectual disciplines - the 'search for truth' - characterized by differ ent research techniques. Sculptor, architect and former Fermilab Director Robert Wilson stressed the human qualities that top flight science brings. Although 'no flower blooms and no birds sing' in physics, the research brings a whole emotional spectrum 'passion, heartbreak, jealousy, ec stasy,...'. Beauty is embodied in the laws of physics - 'like poems' - while symmetry has equal appeal for scientist and artist alike. Wilson emphasized the useful ness of popular science for bridg ing the gap between the initiated and the profane, and advocated in creased cross-disciplinary contact in universities. Former CERN Research Director was mounted, for the first time General Leon Van Hove ('From sciences,' he claimed. While inher outside Italy, at CERN in May. Re Cosmology to Particle Physics') iting much 'moribund' knowledge, flecting the basic inspiration com showed how the laws of physics philosophical approaches can still mon to all human endeavour to ex hold good from the largest scales help clarify concepts, adding cohe tend knowledge, the exhibition was (1036cm) to the smallest (10"17cm), sion and bite. marked also by a Symposium on the span having been extended by Rene Thorn, pioneer of catastro- the Unity and Internationalism of a factor of 1014 on either side in phy theory, illustrated the inherent the Sciences and the Humanities, the last century from the classical differences between 'hard' sponsored by the CERN Science 'beautifully austere' Newtonian pic sciences with exact laws and 'soft' and Society Seminar and the Istitu- ture of gravity. descriptive sciences. The rift be to Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici, Van Hove showed how the ob tween mathematics and everyday and in cooperation with the CERN servations of last year's supernova language is a corollary, and ways Staff Association. dramatically illustrated the interplay of bridging this descriptive gap Speakers, drawn from a wide of gravitation with the weak and would help in the drive to make the cross-section of disciplines, paused strong nuclear forces, demonstrat world more intelligible. for a moment from their everyday ing the complementarity of the dif Girolamo Controneo of Messina researches and gave their views on ferent forces at work in Nature, and (The relation between philosophy the basic unity of the quest for providing a new astronomical win and human sciences') looked at the knowledge, and its consequences, dow on bulk nuclear effects. sociological prerequisites for new intellectual internationalism and the The second day's session, theories, and examined the dicho resultant worldwide relationships chaired by Olivier Reverdin of the tomy between the speculative and of understanding and cooperation. University of Geneva, began with scientific approaches which seems Lincei Vice-President Edoardo Remo Bodei of Pisa examining the to characterize modern culture. Amaldi chaired and first day's pro contemporary philosophical view of Manfred Eigen of the Max Planck ceedings, and Giovanni Pugliese cross-disciplinary reasoning. 'Phi Institute for Biophysical Chemistry Carratelli, Director of the Istituto losophy is no longer queen of the in Gottingen focused on the inter- 22 CERN Courier, July/August 1988 People and things Manfred Eigen - the physics of biology will be available to a wider au On people dience with the publication of the proceedings. 'We have planted some trees,' said Ugo Amaldi, one On 15 May, Carlo Rubbia, Physics of the prime movers behind the Nobel Prizewinner with Simon van symposium, 'others will have to be der Meer in 1984, Director-Gener added to make a real forest.' al-Designate of CERN and Higgins Professor of Physics at Harvard, re ceived the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, from Bos ton University. On 12 April Dubna's scientific community celebrated the 75th birthday of eminent Soviet scientist Venedikt Petrovich Dzhelepov. He was among the leading organizers of the Soviet national high energy physics centre which grew into Dubna's International Joint Institute A recent symposium at the University of for Nuclear Research, where he has California at Los Angeles marked the 70th birthday of Julian Schwinger (third from been Director of the Laboratory of right, front row). Nuclear Problems since 1956. face between chemistry and biolo gy, showing how certain hydrogen bonding (complementary base pair ing) marks the threshold where mo lecules can be regarded as truly 'biological' rather than inertly chemical. He described vivid simulations of cell reproduction which show how the 'error rate' of cell mutation compounds to produce new effects - evolution - in a way very remin iscent of phase changes in physical chemistry. At a certain stage, the information held in the cells 'melts', and new mutants emerge ('survival of the fittest'). During the two days of the sym posium, many deep and thought- provoking ideas were aired, and CERN Courier, July/August 1988 23