I'm not a great fan of writing blog posts by copying press releases, but this is one I found genuinely interesting, so I am sharing it with you! Laura Bassi - from Wikipedia In this month’s edition of Physics World , Paula Findlen from Stanford University profiles Laura Bassi – an emblematic and influential physicist from the 18th century who can be regarded as the first ever woman to forge a professional scientific career. Once described as the “woman who understood Newton”, Laura Bassi – born in the city of Bologna in 1711 – rose to celebrity status in Italy and all across the globe, gaining a reputation as being the best physics teacher of her generation and helping to develop the discipline of experimental physics. Bassi held numerous professorships and academy memberships throughout her life, starting as a professor of universal philosophy at the University of Bologna in 1732, where she may have been the first woman to have embarked upon a fully fledged scientific ca...

I'm delighted that my book on the thirteenth century proto-scientist Roger Bacon (now helpful retitled Roger Bacon from the old  The First Scientist ) is now back in print, or rather in virtualish ebook form from Kindle to iBook. There are three fascinating things here. First there's the medieval university life, complete with murders and riots and other fun activities. Then there's Bacon's remarkable attempt to codify scientific knowledge. The ideas just poured out of him to such a degree that his original proposal - not the book, just the proposal - turned out at over 500,000 words. In it he devised the modern dictionary, used Cartesian coordinates, gave the latest ideas on optics and a whole host of other early bits of work (plus some classic misunderstandings of the period). The final remarkable thing is the story of his attempt to write an encyclopaedia of science, faced by a ban on writing books for his religious order and problems with the pope. It had mor...

Having been on University Challenge ( if only as the subject of a question ) I had a natural interest in the book Universally Challenged, quiz contestants say the funniest things . It was a slight let down that most of the contents have nothing to do with that august BBC 2 quiz show, featuring rather less academic ventures, but it doesn't stop the responses being entertaining. What we have here is a whole stream of wrong answers from the downright dumb to the entertainingly wacky (I particularly liked 'What insect is commonly found hovering over lakes?' - 'Crocodiles.') Admittedly there were a few questions where I doubted the selection, because the answer made too much sense. There was, for instance, 'Name a place where you take your clothes off beside home?' to which the apparently funny answer was 'School.' Now, I can see why this was considered funny, but in fairness to the contestant it was also correct - most people have taken off clothes...

I was excited to get my hands on Anthony Peake's new book The Infinite Mindfield , as I had found his previous title taking a scientific approach to life after death intriguing - and there are parts of the new book I found equally excellent. I was fascinated to learn more about the pineal gland, about which I had very little idea, apart from knowing of the now dismissed idea that identified it as a kind of withered third eye. It is particularly fascinating that the gland can contain piezoelectric crystals that in principle mean it could act as a kind of natural radio receiver. There were also other parts of the book about the nature of light, zero point energy, hallucinogenic drugs and more that were very approachable. Peake has a great way of making you really think about a subject, rather than just take in a set of facts. However there were other sections that I have problems with. The overall approach that I felt unsure with was the lack of selectivity. Everything from th...

As a popular science writer I have always had a second (working) life as a business creativity trainer. It's not uncommon for people in the field to have a second activity - apart from anything else, if you spend your whole working life teaching people to be creative and don't do anything creative yourself, you will soon lose your mojo. A while ago, creativity expert Peter Cook invited me to do some training at one of his Open University events. In my case the 'bit on the side' of writing has taken over to be my primary activity, but Peter keeps his rock musicianship more firmly in check, despite using it directly in his training. But he has recently given it full rein by producing a rock song on the financial crisis that manages to be a little ironic (never a bad thing), thought provoking and a damn good bit of music too. I'll be quite honest, I listened to it on YouTube out of friendship - but that's not enough to make me part with cash. I bought a copy ...

A picture I took as the Queen passed Lancaster University in 1977 I have always been suspicious of those who want that excellent institution the BBC to switch from being funded by licence fee to subscription, but I am coming round to it, because I think I would be hypocritical to argue otherwise given what I'm about to say. The other night I was watching Steven Fry's TV programme on the City of London . All the places were very interesting, but people like the Lord Mayor, beadles and livery companies, dressed up in their silly pantomime costumes really got up my nose. Or rather, I thought it's fine, as long as we don't have to pay for it. As far as I'm aware, the livery companies are self-funding, and if that's the case, and as long as they keep it behind closed doors, I'm delighted for them to prance around in silly robes and share loving cups and such. However, my suspicion is that the Lord Mayor's antics (not Boris, the pantomime Lord Mayor of t...

It's that time again when posts will get a little more sparse as the holidays kick in. Just time for a little sciencey piece on one of Einstein's sometimes overlooked achievements from his annus mirabilis, 1905. Atoms are like small children – they are never entirely still. It’s a remarkable contrast between the visible world, and the world of the very small. Look at a glass of water. That water appears to be motionless, yet within the liquid the water molecules are frantically dancing around. In 1827 a Scottish botanist called Robert Brown was trying to understand plant pollination. On a microscope slide he had the pollen grains of an evening primrose plant suspended in a drop of water. When he peered through the microscope, the tiny specks of pollen jumped about, constantly in motion. What was particularly puzzling was that there seemed to be no order to the motion, no rules for the way they moved. Instead the pollen grains’ dancing was wild, chaotic, quite different ...

Make me cheap! Although we think of Microsoft as a software company they have had some big hits on the hardware front. The Microsoft mouse was, for years, the definitive pointing device. I used Microsoft's ergonomic keyboards for a long time before discovering for reasons I don't understand that Apple's straight version doesn't give me the same strain as a typical keyboard. And, of course, the X-box has done pretty good business. But Microsoft has not been lucky with tablet computing. They first went wrong with their early attempt at creating a touchscreen standard. It gave us that excellent piece of software OneNote, but the hardware never took off. No one could see why anyone would want to buy a tablet when they could have a real computer. Then Apple showed the world exactly why they wanted one - and the world changed. So when Microsoft came back to the market with the Surface they should have had it easy. They had an excellent, touchscreen-oriented operating s...

Here's that wheel of fortune in the original ( image from Wikipedia ) For many people, Carl Orff's unique choral piece Carmina Burana is nothing more or less than 'that music they use on X-Factor.' I suspect the X-Factor producers or Simon Cowell or whoever chose it simply think of the opening/closing chorus of the piece that they use for dramatic effect as a bit of loud imposing background, not realizing just how appropriate it is for TV shows like this. That particular chorus is about the wheel of fortune. How one day you are up on a high - but then the wheel turns again and nothing has really changed. When I was a student I loved this piece. What student wouldn't if you take a look at what it means. It is based on a collection of often bawdy but sometimes romantic poems by medieval monks, obsessed, as only monks and students can be (though in rather different ways), with drinking and sex. Musically there is nothing quite like it (certainly not Orff's ...

One nice side effect of my encounter with the BBC's Robert Peston the other day was that he kindly gave me a copy of his latest book, How Do We Fix This Mess - and I am very grateful that he did. Like, I suspect a lot of people, I have struggled to understand just how the banks got into the mess they did, what is happening to try to untangle it, what is going on in the Eurozone and more. And thanks to this book I now have a much better feel for what it's all about. It's the sort of thing that is very difficult to put across on the TV news, requiring a more detailed, sprawling approach possible in a book, and Peston really does make things a whole lot clearer. He also makes it clear that there hasn't been enough done to prevent this happening again - the regulatory system still encourages the bankers to dream up byzantine mechanisms to get around the rules and increase their bonuses. What's more as a bonus (the acceptable face of the bonus) there's an exp...

After the shoot A couple of weeks ago I had the very enjoyable experience of spending a couple of hours in the company of the BBC's business editor, Robert Peston. In a series of five short pieces, Robert has been finding out more about a number of things that have fascinated him but eluded him over the years. He has learned to do Punch and Judy, to paint a landscape and to order his Chinese takeaway in Mandarin. And I had a go at teaching him quantum physics. We met at the Science Museum Library at Wroughton near Swindon, a location I had suggested as a good sciencey backdrop. Although it was a bit slow going as anything with a camera involved tends to be - and I'm rather sad at just how much as ended up on the cutting room floor - I think it went pretty well. See what you think: