Newsletter, November 2017
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2019 in the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)
THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER FACTS AND FIGURES 2020 2 The University 4 World ranking 6 Academic pedigree 8 World-class research CONTENTS 10 Students 12 Making a difference 14 Global challenges, Manchester solutions 16 Stellify 18 Graduate careers 20 Staff 22 Faculties and Schools 24 Alumni 26 Innovation 28 Widening participation UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER 30 Cultural institutions UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER 32 Income 34 Campus investment 36 At a glance 1 THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER Our vision is to be recognised globally for the excellence of our people, research, learning and innovation, and for the benefits we bring to society and the environment. Our core goals and strategic themes Research and discovery Teaching and learning Social responsibility Our people, our values Innovation Civic engagement Global influence 2 3 WORLD RANKING The quality of our teaching and the impact of our research are the cornerstones of our success. We have risen from 78th in 2004* to 33rd – our highest ever place – in 2019 in the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). League table World ranking European ranking UK ranking 33 8 6 ARWU 33 8 6 WORLD EUROPE UK QS 27 8 6 Times Higher Education 55 16 8 *2004 ranking refers to the Victoria University of Manchester prior to the merger with UMIST. 4 5 ACADEMIC PEDIGREE 1906 1908 1915 1922 1922 We attract the highest-calibre researchers and teachers, with 25 Nobel Prize winners among J Thomson Ernest Rutherford William Archibald V Hill Niels Bohr Physics Chemistry Larence Bragg Physiology or Medicine Physics our current and former staff and students. -
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz's Struggle with Quantum Theory A. J
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz’s struggle with quantum theory A. J. Kox Archive for History of Exact Sciences ISSN 0003-9519 Volume 67 Number 2 Arch. Hist. Exact Sci. (2013) 67:149-170 DOI 10.1007/s00407-012-0107-8 1 23 Your article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution license which allows users to read, copy, distribute and make derivative works, as long as the author of the original work is cited. You may self- archive this article on your own website, an institutional repository or funder’s repository and make it publicly available immediately. 1 23 Arch. Hist. Exact Sci. (2013) 67:149–170 DOI 10.1007/s00407-012-0107-8 Hendrik Antoon Lorentz’s struggle with quantum theory A. J. Kox Received: 15 June 2012 / Published online: 24 July 2012 © The Author(s) 2012. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract A historical overview is given of the contributions of Hendrik Antoon Lorentz in quantum theory. Although especially his early work is valuable, the main importance of Lorentz’s work lies in the conceptual clarifications he provided and in his critique of the foundations of quantum theory. 1 Introduction The Dutch physicist Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853–1928) is generally viewed as an icon of classical, nineteenth-century physics—indeed, as one of the last masters of that era. Thus, it may come as a bit of a surprise that he also made important contribu- tions to quantum theory, the quintessential non-classical twentieth-century develop- ment in physics. The importance of Lorentz’s work lies not so much in his concrete contributions to the actual physics—although some of his early work was ground- breaking—but rather in the conceptual clarifications he provided and his critique of the foundations and interpretations of the new ideas. -
Rutherford's Nuclear World: the Story of the Discovery of the Nuc
Rutherford's Nuclear World: The Story of the Discovery of the Nuc... http://www.aip.org/history/exhibits/rutherford/sections/atop-physic... HOME SECTIONS CREDITS EXHIBIT HALL ABOUT US rutherford's explore the atom learn more more history of learn about aip's nuclear world with rutherford about this site physics exhibits history programs Atop the Physics Wave ShareShareShareShareShareMore 9 RUTHERFORD BACK IN CAMBRIDGE, 1919–1937 Sections ← Prev 1 2 3 4 5 Next → In 1962, John Cockcroft (1897–1967) reflected back on the “Miraculous Year” ( Annus mirabilis ) of 1932 in the Cavendish Laboratory: “One month it was the neutron, another month the transmutation of the light elements; in another the creation of radiation of matter in the form of pairs of positive and negative electrons was made visible to us by Professor Blackett's cloud chamber, with its tracks curled some to the left and some to the right by powerful magnetic fields.” Rutherford reigned over the Cavendish Lab from 1919 until his death in 1937. The Cavendish Lab in the 1920s and 30s is often cited as the beginning of modern “big science.” Dozens of researchers worked in teams on interrelated problems. Yet much of the work there used simple, inexpensive devices — the sort of thing Rutherford is famous for. And the lab had many competitors: in Paris, Berlin, and even in the U.S. Rutherford became Cavendish Professor and director of the Cavendish Laboratory in 1919, following the It is tempting to simplify a complicated story. Rutherford directed the Cavendish Lab footsteps of J.J. Thomson. Rutherford died in 1937, having led a first wave of discovery of the atom. -
The Institute of Physics
REGIONAL NEWS 21 The Institute of Physics The forerunner of the Institute of do involves physics - switching on a light, physicists in commerce and industry. The Physics, the Physical Society of London, making a phone call or even baking a Council has established several Profession was created in 1874 at a time when the potato in a microwave oven. In industry, al Groups in areas such as consultancy, understanding of the physical world had physicists are helping companies to devel engineering physics and advanced been given an enormous impetus with the op novel materials that have physical prop systems. publication by James Clerk Maxwell of his erties more versatile that those previously In these days of shrinking science theory of electromagnetism. The creation developed, and they are designing new budgets, the academic physics community of the Physical Society was the response of generations of microchips which are has turned increasingly to its professional the embryonic society of professional and smaller and hence faster. The information representative, the Institute of Physics, to amateur physicists in Britain to what they revolution within which we are currently lobby Government about the importance believed was a major progression of their being buffeted would have been impos and relevance of physics. In common with ideas. Indeed, one could say that it was at sible without physicists and their research other science subjects, calls to justify Gov this time that much of physics began to - transistors, liquid crystal displays, mag ernment expenditure have increased in take on the appearance we recognize netic discs, optical fibres, semiconductor recent years. -
Einstein's Mistakes
Einstein’s Mistakes Einstein was the greatest genius of the Twentieth Century, but his discoveries were blighted with mistakes. The Human Failing of Genius. 1 PART 1 An evaluation of the man Here, Einstein grows up, his thinking evolves, and many quotations from him are listed. Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Einstein at 14 Einstein at 26 Einstein at 42 3 Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Einstein at age 61 (1940) 4 Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Born in Ulm, Swabian region of Southern Germany. From a Jewish merchant family. Had a sister Maja. Family rejected Jewish customs. Did not inherit any mathematical talent. Inherited stubbornness, Inherited a roguish sense of humor, An inclination to mysticism, And a habit of grüblen or protracted, agonizing “brooding” over whatever was on its mind. Leading to the thought experiment. 5 Portrait in 1947 – age 68, and his habit of agonizing brooding over whatever was on its mind. He was in Princeton, NJ, USA. 6 Einstein the mystic •“Everyone who is seriously involved in pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man..” •“When I assess a theory, I ask myself, if I was God, would I have arranged the universe that way?” •His roguish sense of humor was always there. •When asked what will be his reactions to observational evidence against the bending of light predicted by his general theory of relativity, he said: •”Then I would feel sorry for the Good Lord. The theory is correct anyway.” 7 Einstein: Mathematics •More quotations from Einstein: •“How it is possible that mathematics, a product of human thought that is independent of experience, fits so excellently the objects of physical reality?” •Questions asked by many people and Einstein: •“Is God a mathematician?” •His conclusion: •“ The Lord is cunning, but not malicious.” 8 Einstein the Stubborn Mystic “What interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world” Some broadcasters expunged the comment from the soundtrack because they thought it was blasphemous. -
The Life of William Ewart Gladstone (Vol 2 of 3) by John Morley
The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life of William Ewart Gladstone (Vol 2 of 3) by John Morley This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license Title: The Life of William Ewart Gladstone (Vol 2 of 3) Author: John Morley Release Date: May 24, 2010, 2009 [Ebook 32510] Language: English ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE (VOL 2 OF 3)*** The Life Of William Ewart Gladstone By John Morley In Three Volumes—Vol. II. (1859-1880) Toronto George N. Morang & Company, Limited Copyright, 1903 By The Macmillan Company Contents Book V. 1859-1868 . .2 Chapter I. The Italian Revolution. (1859-1860) . .2 Chapter II. The Great Budget. (1860-1861) . 21 Chapter III. Battle For Economy. (1860-1862) . 49 Chapter IV. The Spirit Of Gladstonian Finance. (1859- 1866) . 62 Chapter V. American Civil War. (1861-1863) . 79 Chapter VI. Death Of Friends—Days At Balmoral. (1861-1884) . 99 Chapter VII. Garibaldi—Denmark. (1864) . 121 Chapter VIII. Advance In Public Position And Other- wise. (1864) . 137 Chapter IX. Defeat At Oxford—Death Of Lord Palmer- ston—Parliamentary Leadership. (1865) . 156 Chapter X. Matters Ecclesiastical. (1864-1868) . 179 Chapter XI. Popular Estimates. (1868) . 192 Chapter XII. Letters. (1859-1868) . 203 Chapter XIII. Reform. (1866) . 223 Chapter XIV. The Struggle For Household Suffrage. (1867) . 250 Chapter XV. -
Spring-8 Highlights 2014
Three‐way Meeting 2015 27th ‐28th Feb. 2015 SPring‐8 Highlights 2014 Photo by Shigeki Tsujimoto Masaki Takata RIKEN SPring‐8 Center 1 How SPring‐8 really works? What is benefits of Science? 2 It was important to map SPring‐8 in society as well as science community. 3 Overview • Building Brand • Expanding Cooperation • Increasing Awareness • Shaping Future 4 Building Brand • Tissue Engineering • Critical Materials Strategy • Quantum Nano Dynamics • SR Magnetism • Nano Applications 5 Tissue Engineering Cardiac Regenerative Nobel Laureate Therapy Using Cell Sheets S. Yamanaka Integration of iPSC‐cardiomyocytes in the Heart non‐invasive investigation of regional beating of cardiac muscle Prof. Yoshiki Sawa Dept. of Cardiovascular Surgery Osaka University iPSC‐CMs‐ transplanted heart day 14 Showing synchronized contraction of the iPSC‐CMs sham‐operated in the sheet. heart Arrows indicate timing of end diastole. SAXS: Regional beating of Rat heart CT‐1353 Accepted 12/20/2014 for publication in “Cell Transplantation” 6 Critical Materials Strategy Elements Strategy Initiative Center for Magnetic Materials (ESICMM) Smart Visualization for Domain Engineering Kazuhiro Hono A key tool to quest for Dy‐free Nd‐Fe‐B Permanent Magnets NIMS Fellow Director of Magnetic Materials Unit BL25SU: Soft X‐ray Soft X‐ray Nano Spectroscopy Beamline; BL25SU Nano Application Since 2014 7 Critical Materials Strategy Elements Strategy Initiative Center for Magnetic Materials (ESICMM) Micro Magnetic Simulation Concerted with SPring‐8 A key tool to quest for Dy‐free Nd‐Fe‐B Permanent Magnets Shinji Tsuneyuki University of Tokyo, Computational Materials Science Initiative Domain information upgrades a simulation technology. K‐Computer H. Sepehri-Amin et al., 8 Scripta Mater. -
Mundella Papers Scope
University of Sheffield Library. Special Collections and Archives Ref: MS 6 - 9, MS 22 Title: Mundella Papers Scope: The correspondence and other papers of Anthony John Mundella, Liberal M.P. for Sheffield, including other related correspondence, 1861 to 1932. Dates: 1861-1932 (also Leader Family correspondence 1848-1890) Level: Fonds Extent: 23 boxes Name of creator: Anthony John Mundella Administrative / biographical history: The content of the papers is mainly political, and consists largely of the correspondence of Mundella, a prominent Liberal M.P. of the later 19th century who attained Cabinet rank. Also included in the collection are letters, not involving Mundella, of the family of Robert Leader, acquired by Mundella’s daughter Maria Theresa who intended to write a biography of her father, and transcriptions by Maria Theresa of correspondence between Mundella and Robert Leader, John Daniel Leader and another Sheffield Liberal M.P., Henry Joseph Wilson. The collection does not include any of the business archives of Hine and Mundella. Anthony John Mundella (1825-1897) was born in Leicester of an Italian father and an English mother. After education at a National School he entered the hosiery trade, ultimately becoming a partner in the firm of Hine and Mundella of Nottingham. He became active in the political life of Nottingham, and after giving a series of public lectures in Sheffield was invited to contest the seat in the General Election of 1868. Mundella was Liberal M.P. for Sheffield from 1868 to 1885, and for the Brightside division of the Borough from November 1885 to his death in 1897. -
William Lawrence Bragg
W ILLIAM L AWRENCE B R A G G The diffraction of X-rays by crystals Nobel Lecture, September 6, 1922* It is with the very greatest pleasure that I take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude to you for the great honour which you bestowed upon me, when you awarded my father and myself the Nobel Prize for Physics in the year 1915. In other years scientists have come here to express their thanks to you, who have received this great distinction for the work of an illustrious career devoted to research. That you should have given me, at the very out- set of my scientific career, even the most humble place amongst their ranks, is an honour of which I cannot but be very proud. You invited me here two years ago, after the end of the war, but a series of unfortunate circumstances made it impossible for me to accept your invi- tation. I have always profoundly regretted this, and it was therefore with the very greatest satisfaction that I received the invitation of Prof. Arrhenius a few months ago, and arranged for this visit. I am at last able to tell you how deeply grateful I am to you, and to give you my thanks in person. You have already honoured with the Nobel Prize Prof. von Laue, to whom we owe the great discovery which has made possible all progress in a new realm of science, the study of the structure of matter by the diffraction of X-rays. Prof von Laue, in his Nobel Lecture, has described to you how he was led to make his epochal discovery. -
Download Report 2010-12
RESEARCH REPORt 2010—2012 MAX-PLANCK-INSTITUT FÜR WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Cover: Aurora borealis paintings by William Crowder, National Geographic (1947). The International Geophysical Year (1957–8) transformed research on the aurora, one of nature’s most elusive and intensely beautiful phenomena. Aurorae became the center of interest for the big science of powerful rockets, complex satellites and large group efforts to understand the magnetic and charged particle environment of the earth. The auroral visoplot displayed here provided guidance for recording observations in a standardized form, translating the sublime aesthetics of pictorial depictions of aurorae into the mechanical aesthetics of numbers and symbols. Most of the portait photographs were taken by Skúli Sigurdsson RESEARCH REPORT 2010—2012 MAX-PLANCK-INSTITUT FÜR WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Introduction The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) is made up of three Departments, each administered by a Director, and several Independent Research Groups, each led for five years by an outstanding junior scholar. Since its foundation in 1994 the MPIWG has investigated fundamental questions of the history of knowl- edge from the Neolithic to the present. The focus has been on the history of the natu- ral sciences, but recent projects have also integrated the history of technology and the history of the human sciences into a more panoramic view of the history of knowl- edge. Of central interest is the emergence of basic categories of scientific thinking and practice as well as their transformation over time: examples include experiment, ob- servation, normalcy, space, evidence, biodiversity or force. -
Nuclear Fragmentation Reactions: from Basic Research to Medical Applications Igor N
Nuclear fragmentation reactions: from basic research to medical applications Igor N. Mishustin Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS), J.W. Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main National Research Center “Kurchatov Institute”, Moscow Part 1: Introduction: Nuclear break-up processes Basic Research Statistical description of nuclear break-up Multifragmentation of nuclei Nuclear Liquid-Gas phase transition Applications Propagation of heavy ions through extended medium Cancer therapy with ion beams Transmutation of radioactive waste Conclusions Introduction: Nuclear break-up processes, historical remarks Anticipation of nuclear “explosions” Nobel prize in Physics (1922) “for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of Niels Bohr (1885 – 1962) the radiation emanating from them" Evaporation/fission of compound nucleus t=0 fm/c t>1000 fm/c p A CN low excitation fission Compound Nucleus (CN) is an equilibrated hot nucleus whose excitation energy is distributed over many microscopic d.o.f. (introduced by Niels Bohr in 1936-39) Sequential evaporation model—Weiskopf 1937, Statistical fission model—Bohr-Wheeler 1939, Frenkel 1939 Nuclear break-up: multifragmentation t=0 fm/c t>100 fm/c p A pA collision spectator A or B spectator A moderate excitation peripheral spectator AB collision B slow expansion equilibrated system at freeze-out Power-low fragment mass distribution around critical point, Y(A)~A-τ Can be well understood within an equilibrium statistical approach Early 80s: Randrup&Koonin, D.H.E. Gross et al, Bondorf-Mishustin-Botvina, Hahn&Stoecker; Later: S. Das Gupta et al., Gulminelli et al, Raduta et al,... Explosive disintegration of nuclei t ≈ R/v < 50 fm/c t = 0 fm/c f hot foreball central AA collision compression+heating E>50 AMeV collective flow fast expansion of fragments Typically, exponential fragment mass distributions, Y(A)~exp(-bA) The stronger is flow-the smaller are fragments-mechanical rupture Dynamical modeling is required: QMD, IQMD, NMD, AMD, .. -
Lawrence Bragg's “Brainwave” Drives Father-Son Collaboration
www.mrs.org/publications/bulletin HISTORICAL NOTE Lawrence Bragg’s “Brainwave” Drives Father-Son Collaboration In 1912, some 17 years after the serendip- and quickly began to learn what he could itous discovery of x-rays by Wilhelm on the subject. Röntgen, a debate raged as to the wave or Until this point in his life, at age 42, particle nature of this radiation phenome- William later recalled, “It had never non. William Henry Bragg, a 50-year-old entered my head that I should do any professor of physics at Leeds University in research work.” His curiosity aroused by England, came down firmly on the side of his reading on radiation, he soon obtained particles, citing the bullet-like nature of the some radium samples and began the rays, and how they were preferentially experiments that were to make him a lead- scattered in the forward direction when ing figure in radiation theory in a few colliding with matter. Max von Laue of years’ time. He quickly developed novel Germany, having produced elegant spot- hypotheses about the nature of radioactiv- diffraction photographs of CuS by aiming ity. The penetrating power of x-rays, and x-rays at crystal samples, used the diffrac- the fact that they are not deflected by a tion behavior as evidence for the wave magnetic field, were accounted for by the argument. Experiments by Charles G. “neutral pair hypothesis,” which stated Barkla that demonstrated the polarization that x-rays consisted of “an electron which of x-rays confirmed the wave theory in the has assumed a cloak of darkness in the minds of many scientists.