Other

A dangerous experiment

“A dangerous experiment” an analysis of the state of science at UK universities, published in the Prospect supplement Quarter
Download PDF

How on earth did we get here?

How on earth did we get here?: introduction to the science section of A Very Short Introduction to Everything (OUP, 2003).
Download PDF

Introduction to “HOW ON EARTH DID WE GET HERE?”

Published (with final paragraph inadvertently omitted) in A Very Short Introduction to Everything (OUP, 2003) by Philip Ball

In 1638 two men met in a villa in Arcetri, near Florence. One was a precocious thirty-year-old Englishman, the other an ageing and grey-bearded Italian natural philosopher. Under house arrest by order of the Roman Church, Galileo was used to receiving visitors curious about his astronomical theory, and his young guest may have left little impression. But John Milton did not forget the meeting. …

How on earth did we get here?Read More »

Portrait of a molecule

Portrait of a molecule: an article published in a supplement for the 50th anniversary of DNA, Nature 421, 421-422 (2003).
Download PDF

PORTRAIT OF A MOLECULE – Philip Ball

An article published in a supplement for the 50th anniversary of DNA
Nature 421, 421-422 (2003)

Rather like those of Albert Einstein, DNA’s popular images are hardly representative. While it is fashionable in these post-genome days to show it as an endless string of A’s, C’s, G’s and T’s, this year’s anniversary will surely be illustrated with two kinds of picture. One shows the famous double helix, delightfully suggesting the twin snakes of Wisdom and Knowledge intertwining around the caduceus, the staff of the medic’s god Hermes. The other reveals the X-shaped symbol of inheritance, the chromosome. …

Portrait of a moleculeRead More »

Uncertainty

Uncertainty: an article published in Frontiers 03 (Atlantic Books, 2003).
Download PDF

HOW LITTLE WE KNOW ABOUT THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE

Philip Ball. An article published in Frontiers 03 (Atlantic Books, 2003)

    Heisenberg: Are we doomed to disagree then on what happened between us at Copenhagen? Bohr: But that is the whole point, Werner. You yourself have shown that uncertainty is a fundamental part of nature – that there is always imprecision in our knowledge of things.

The disturbing thing is not that these lines don’t appear anywhere in Michael Frayn’s play Copenhagen (I made them up), but that if they had, few people would have batted an eyelid. For isn’t that what Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle tells us: that uncertainty lies at the heart of everything?

…

UncertaintyRead More »

Chemistry in soft focus

Chemistry in soft focus: an article published in Chemistry in Britain 38(9), 32 (2002).
Download PDF

CHEMISTRY IN SOFT FOCUS

An article published in Chemistry in Britain 38(9), p.32 (2002)

Chemistry seems to have more than its fair share of romance. Who can resist the story of Kekulé’s sleep-drenched vision of carbon chains on the last bus to Clapham before “the cry of the conductor· awakened me from my dreaming”? Or Louis Pasteur picking apart tiny crystals of tartaric acid with tweezers in hand before verifying his intuition of chirality, shrieking “Eureka!” and running out of the lab to embrace a bewildered Dr Bertrand in the corridor?

These stories, repeated endlessly and uncritically, have entered the mythology of chemistry. It is only in recent years that a more careful dissection of the discipline’s history has revealed how flimsy is the evidence to support many of them. Some of chemistry’s popular tales are probably outright fabrication, the product of wishful thinking, over-embellished recollection, wilful self-aggrandisement or a skewed historical agenda. …

Chemistry in soft focusRead More »

Scroll to Top