What mathematicians do

Yes, it looks different. It sort of just happened. I was updating my links, and then they all vanished and I got this n

Follow this

I thought I could resist. I really did. I was convinced it would just waste my time, and perhaps it will. But here it i

Great balls of fire

This ball lightning has got everywhere (like here and here and here), often inaccurately – the paper in Physical Review

The year of crystallography

Here is 2012 Chemistry Nobel Laureate Brian Kobilka speaking yesterday at the opening ceremony of the International Yea

Flight of the robot jellyfish

Here’s my other little piece for Nature news. The videos of this thing in flight, provided on the Nature site, are rath

"Irrational" behaviour can be rational

I have a couple of news stories on Nature’s site this week. Here’s the first. This is, I think, more of a cautionary ta

The future of physics

Research Funding Insight recently asked me to write a piece on the “future of physics”, to accompany a critique of stri

A prize for Max von Laue

In my book Serving the Reich, I make some remarks about the potential pitfalls of naming institutions, prizes and so fo

The cult of the instrument

I have a piece in Aeon about instruments in science. Here’s how it looked at the outset. ______________________________

A splash of colour

More supermarket science for the rather sweet lifestyle magazine The Simple Things. This time it’s a little discourse o