Physics books that captured the imagination in 2021

12/22/21 • 48 min

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In keeping with our festive tradition, the December episode of Physics World Stories is all about physics books. Host Andrew Glester is joined by Physics World’s reviews and careers editor Laura Hiscott and the magazine’s editor-in-chief Matin Durrani to discuss a handpicked selection of popular-science books reviewed in 2021.

One of the year’s most memorable titles is Hawking Hawking: the Selling of a Scientific Celebrity by Charles Seife. Stephen Hawking’s status as an exceptional scientist and human being are beyond question. But Seife takes a warts-and-all look at the role self-publicity played in the British cosmologist’s public persona as the smartest scientist since Einstein.

Hawking Hawking is discussed in the first part of the podcast and there is a fun quiz for you to test your knowledge of Hawking’s life. In the second part, the Physics World journalists discuss these other books and the wider talking points that they raise:

Flashes of Creation: George Gamow, Fred Hoyle, and the Great Big Bang Debate by Paul Halpern
Helgoland by Carlo Rovelli
Shell Beach: the Search for the Final Theory by Jesper Grimstrup
Science Fiction by Sherryl Vint
How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations with Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason by Lee McIntyre

Flashes of Creation: George Gamow, Fred Hoyle, and the Great Big Bang Debate by Paul Halpern
Helgoland by Carlo Rovelli
Shell Beach: the Search for the Final Theory by Jesper Grimstrup
Science Fiction by Sherryl Vint
How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations with Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason by Lee McIntyre

Previous Episode

Sharing is caring: open hardware has global impact

The open hardware movement advocates the sharing of designs for material objects. For the global science community it means people can access instructions to 3D print increasingly sophisticated tools. Just as importantly, the movement is decentralizing knowledge and giving users the ability to customize scientific equipment then repair it when things go wrong.

In the latest episode of Physics World Stories, Andrew Glester meets researchers at the University of Bath who are part of the open science community.

First, social scientist Julieta Arancio discusses the open hardware movement’s origins and some impactful projects. Among them are: Open Science with Drones; GORGAS tracker for Malaria and Human Mobility in the Peruvian Amazon; and Mboa Lab, a makerspace community in Cameroon.

Later, Richard Bowman and Julian Stirling describe the journey of developing a low-cost, laboratory-grade microscope. The OpenFlexure project, developed with the University of Cambridge and partners in Tanzania, can become an important tool in the fight against malaria.

Next Episode

The James Webb Space Telescope launches astronomy into a new era

After decades in the making, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) finally launched on 25 December 2021, ushering in a new era for astronomy. On Monday the $10bn mission reached its destination, the L2 Lagrange point 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, where it will remain in orbit throughout the mission.

In this episode of the Physics World Stories podcast, Andrew Glester meets JWST scientists to recall their experiences of the mission launch and the telescope’s journey so far. Now, the researchers are looking ahead with excitement to the science programme, which gets under way in June or July.

Jonathan Gardner, the JWST’s deputy senior project scientist, describes the fierce competition among astronomers to win time to use the state-of-the-art telescope. Gardner’s own research in deep surveys will benefit as the JWST can peer back to some of the first galaxies to form after the Big Bang.

Joining Gardner on the podcast is Stefanie Milam, the JWST’s deputy project scientist for planetary science. Milam describes how the telescope will explore the watery moons of Europa and Enceladus within our solar system, as well as investigating the atmospheres of exoplanets in search of intriguing chemical signals.

Find out more about the JWST mission in this feature article by Keith Cooper, originally published in the January issue of Physics World.