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Not So Elementary (the Cosmos, That Is)

Recently there are appeared a paper showing how Physics - Iron–Helium Compounds Form Under...

Carbon — to capture or not to capture

This came up on 2nd November 2024 (give or take a day), a broadcaster objecting to a carbon capture...

The Azolla Event: when is a fern not a fern?

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Betelgeuse, Gamow, and a Big Red Horse

There has been a lot of talk recently of Betelgeuse possibly going supernova this century or not...

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Robert H OlleyRSS Feed of this column.

Until recently, I worked in the Polymer Physics Group of the Physics Department at the University of Reading.

I would describe myself as a Polymer Morphologist. I am not an astronaut,

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The Black Forest of Equations

The Black Forest of Equations

Sep 18 2009 | comment(s)

Having returned from a Polymer Physics conference a couple of days ago, I felt the need to read one of the masters of the subject, Nobel laureate Pierre-Gilles de Gennes.   I came across this gem:

Fragile Objects: Soft Matter, Hard Science and the Thrill of Discovery by Pierre Gilles de Gennes and J. Badoz (read the link for a description).

Here I found this gem within a gem, a chapter entitled The Imperialism of Mathematics, which starts:
Gruesome Analysis

Gruesome Analysis

Sep 02 2009 | comment(s)

I have just read a letter in Chemistry World (September 2009, p40) by A J Dijkstra, who has just translated the first ever book on lipid chemistry from French into English. This book is Recherches chimiques sur les corps gras d'origine animale, Paris, 1823, by Michel Eugène Chevreul. His long life (1786 – 1889) took him from before the French Revolution to the inauguration of the Eiffel Tower. Chevreul had a long and varied scientific career, as his Wikipedia biography relates. 

A new meaning to

A new meaning to "carbon compounds"?

Aug 09 2009 | comment(s)

Ploughing through the Codex just now, I come across this (with particular reference to MRSA), by Brigitte Nerlich of the University of Nottingham, England:

Words matter in public health

... media coverage of hygiene and cleanliness in hospitals tended to portray doctors and nurses engaged in a heroic "battle" against "intelligent super bugs. This was personified by the modern matron wielding the weapon of "cleanliness." Interviews with hospital matrons revealed a gap between the media portrayal and the reality on the wards. Matrons said that the limitations in their authority over contractors, and time constraints made it impossible for them to spend even half their time as a "visible presence" on the wards. ...
The Oxford Calculators

The Oxford Calculators

Aug 08 2009 | comment(s)

I have often found reference to medieval and early modern folks most helpful in debugging things that have bugged me since I did science when I was a student in the Sixties (for me they did not swing). One particular bunch are the Oxford Calculators, also known as the Merton scholars. As the Wikipedia article states:
The Shortest Distance?

The Shortest Distance?

Aug 05 2009 | comment(s)

Until recently, I had only known of Thomas Carlyle as a writer, mightily significant in the 19th century, but somehow superannuated by the time I heard of him.  However, recently I learnt that he is responsible for that famous English mis-definition:


A straight line is the shortest distance between two points.

which he gave us while translating the Eléments de géométrie of Legendre.  The great French mathematician actually wrote

"La ligne droit est le plus court chemin d'un point à un autre."

Murder in the Courtroom

Murder in the Courtroom

Jul 18 2009 | comment(s)

I was reading about recent excavations at Amheida, a buried city in Egypt’s Dakhleh Oasis, where it is beginning to appear that agricultural development was taking place before the settlement of the Nile valley and rise of the Pharaohs. I thereupon turned the Al-Ahram Weekly Online, in order to search their Heritage section, and read about the horrendous murder of the wife of an Egyptian doctoral student here in Europe. It is always very sad when tragedy befalls people coming from abroad to work or study in our universities and institutes, but this incident is particularly gruesome.