Cavendish Laboratory Research Articles

Exercising the imagination: ecofeminist science fictions as object-oriented thought experiments in education

ABSTRACT This essay offers a rationale for deploying ecofeminist science fiction stories as object-oriented thought experiments in science and environmental education, with particular reference to developments in genetics and evolutionary biology, and their implications for human (and more-than-human) reproduction and kinship in the period following the determination of the double helical structure of DNA by scientists affiliated with Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory in 1953, and the impact of subsequent gene-centric discourses on the biological sciences and the wider culture. The utility and defensibility of this approach is exemplified by reference to two science fiction novels by the late Naomi Mitchison that foreground and anticipate implications of genetic sciences for matters of concern to ecofeminists, including reproductive rights and responsibilities, population control, human relations with the more-than-human, and problematizing gendered (and other) binaries in everyday speech and popular culture.

John Frank Allen. 6 May 1908—22 April 2001

John Frank (Jack) Allen was a Canadian-born pioneer of low temperature physics. With his graduate student, Don Misener, he discovered the phenomenon of superfluidity on passing HeII through very narrow glass capillaries. Simultaneously, and independently, the phenomenon was discovered by Piotr Kapitza FRS in the Soviet Union. Jack's most famous discovery in 1938 was the fountain effect in liquid HeII, a further manifestation of the role of superfluidity at very low temperatures. The Nobel Prize for the discovery of superfluidity was awarded to Kapitza in 1978. Jack invented the O-ring as a reliable vacuum seal and, in 1947, followed this by the indium-ring cryogenic seal. In 1958, with John Bardeen (ForMemRS 1973) and Jan de Boer, he initiated a project that saved three million cubic feet of helium gas from being lost to the world. After running the Mond Laboratory in the Cavendish Laboratory from the late 1930s, in 1947 he was appointed professor of natural philosophy at St Andrews University, where he led the construction of a new physics building and built up an internationally respected department. He campaigned for student representation, and was well known for his physics demonstrations. In later life, he carried out a programme to erect plaques to Nevil Maskelyne FRS, who measured the gravitational constant G , and to celebrate the achievements of St Andrews luminaries.

Editorial

Editorial

AI et al.: Machines Are About to Change Scientific Publishing Forever

ADVERTISEMENT RETURN TO ISSUEPREVViewpointNEXTAI et al.: Machines Are About to Change Scientific Publishing ForeverGianluca Grimaldi*Gianluca GrimaldiCenter for Nanophotonics, AMOLF, Science Park 104, 1098 XG Amsterdam, The NetherlandsOptoelectronics Section, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1TN, U.K.*[email protected]More by Gianluca Grimaldihttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-2626-9118 and Bruno Ehrler*Bruno EhrlerCenter for Nanophotonics, AMOLF, Science Park 104, 1098 XG Amsterdam, The Netherlands*[email protected]More by Bruno Ehrlerhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-5307-3241Cite this: ACS Energy Lett. 2023, 8, 1, 878–880Publication Date (Web):January 4, 2023Publication History Received13 December 2022Accepted22 December 2022Published online4 January 2023Published inissue 13 January 2023https://doi.org/10.1021/acsenergylett.2c02828Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by American Chemical SocietyRIGHTS & PERMISSIONSACS AuthorChoiceCC: Creative CommonsBY: Credit must be given to the creatorArticle Views10054Altmetric-Citations1LEARN ABOUT THESE METRICSArticle Views are the COUNTER-compliant sum of full text article downloads since November 2008 (both PDF and HTML) across all institutions and individuals. These metrics are regularly updated to reflect usage leading up to the last few days.Citations are the number of other articles citing this article, calculated by Crossref and updated daily. Find more information about Crossref citation counts.The Altmetric Attention Score is a quantitative measure of the attention that a research article has received online. Clicking on the donut icon will load a page at altmetric.com with additional details about the score and the social media presence for the given article. Find more information on the Altmetric Attention Score and how the score is calculated. Share Add toView InAdd Full Text with ReferenceAdd Description ExportRISCitationCitation and abstractCitation and referencesMore Options Share onFacebookTwitterWechatLinked InReddit PDF (3 MB) Get e-AlertsSupporting Info (1)»Supporting Information Supporting Information SUBJECTS:Paper,Permeability,Perovskites,Redox reactions,Software Get e-Alerts

Paul Langevin: His life and family

2022 marks the 150th Anniversary of the birth of Paul Langevin, the originator of ultrasonics. He was born, lived, and died in Paris. His parents were of modest means. He was a humanist and a rationalist. Scientifically precocious, he was taught by Pierre Curie and spent a year at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge. He gained a professorship at the ESPCI eventually becoming Director there. He also was Professor at the Collége de France, where his talent as a teacher gained wide recognition. He married Jeanne Desfosses in1898 and his children were as important to him as his science. They had two sons, Jean and André, both physicists, and two daughters Madeleine and Hélène. Paul-Gilbert, son of his scientific co-worker Eliane Montel, became a physicist and musicologist. In the interwar years he was an anti-Fascist activist. Imprisoned in 1940, he was then placed under house arrest in Troyes. After escaping to Switzerland in 1944, he returned to huge acclaim in liberated Paris. Elected as a Councilor for the Communist Party, he led the Committee for the Reorganization of Education in France, in spite of failing health. He died in 1946 and is interred in the Pantheon.

Scientific computing in the Cavendish Laboratory and the pioneering women computors

ABSTRACT The use of computers and the role of women in radio astronomy and X-ray crystallography research at the Cavendish Laboratory between 1949 and 1975 have been investigated. We recorded examples of when computers were used, what they were used for and who used them from hundreds of papers published during these years. The use of the EDSAC, EDSAC 2 and TITAN computers was found to increase considerably over this time-scale and they were used for a diverse range of applications. The majority of references to computer operators and programmers referred to women, 57% for astronomy and 62% for crystallography, in contrast to a very small proportion, 4% and 13% respectively, of female authors of papers.

Nanocracks in nature and industry.

Nanocracks in nature and industry.

Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick, Country House Science, and Personae for British Women in Science at the turn of the Twentieth Century

Higher education for women in the fields of science and mathematics significantly expanded in the United Kingdom at the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. A major force in that expansion was Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick (1845–1934), the mathematically talented head of Newnham College, Cambridge, and researcher in experimental physics at the University of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory. In this article I examine Sidgwick’s role in advancing science education for women, focusing on her construction of a scientific persona for British women that drew upon her evangelical Anglican values of family and domesticity. I argue that Sidgwick’s work contributed to an enterprise of ‘country house science’ in which other members of her extended family were engaged, and that her case contributes to a reorientation of the historiography from a focus on recovery of women’s peripheral contributions to the positioning of the work of science education for women more centrally in our narratives about women in science.

Editorial

Editorial

Exclusive decay study of the 16.62 MeV (2−, T = 1) resonance in 12C

The 3α decay of the 16.62 MeV (2−, T=1) resonance in 12C has been studied for nearly a century starting with one of the first nuclear reaction studies at the Cavendish Laboratory in the 1930s. In the hitherto latest study published a decade ago a model based on earlier work from the 1960s was found to give a good account of a set of inclusive data. This model describes the decay as an l=3 α-particle populating the 2+ state of 8Be. Here we provide new exclusive data on the 3α decay of the 16.62 MeV resonance, and demonstrate that the decay is best described by a model with predominantly l=1 emission with an admixture of l=3.

Antony Hewish

Antony Hewish (1924–2021) Pioneer radio astronomer and leader of the team of researchers who identified the first pulsar, remembered by Malcolm Longair. Antony (Tony) Hewish went up to Cambridge University in 1942 to read natural sciences. After his second year, however, he was sent for war service at the Telecommunications Research Establishment, Malvern, where Martin Ryle was head of the radar counter-measures group. Tony worked on devices to jam the radar systems of hostile night-fighters. Returning to Cambridge in 1946, he completed his physics degree and then joined the newly founded radio astronomy group led by Ryle at the Cavendish Laboratory. Tony specialized in the phenomenon of radio scintillation, the twinkling of radio sources caused by plasma irregularities along the line of sight to the source. In 1951–52, he worked out in detail the theory of radio source scintillation (Hewish 1952) and in 1964 the phenomenon was observed in compact radio sources (Hewish et al. 1964). These sources included the recently discovered quasars, among the most extreme examples of active galactic nuclei.

Editorial

Editorial

Professor H. Gutfreund, FRS (21 October 1921 to 21 March 2021)

Professor H. Gutfreund, FRS (21 October 1921 to 21 March 2021)

John Edwin Field. 20 September 1936—21 October 2020

John Field was a brilliant experimental physicist who made major contributions to the physics and chemistry of solids. His research interests spanned a very wide range of topics, most of them involving energetic phenomena. These areas included the strength properties of solids, fracture growth, impact and erosion phenomena, shock physics, reactivity of solids, explosive initiation, lasers, acoustics and medical physics. Within the Physics and Chemistry of Solids Group in the Cavendish Laboratory, he developed the best-equipped high-speed camera facility in any university in Europe, including seven that achieved frame rates in excess of 10 6 frames per second. In addition to the cameras, extensive use was made of ultrasonics, optical and electron microscopy, mass spectroscopy and thermal techniques. He played an important national role in advising the Ministry of Defence on a wide range of topics in energetic phenomena and materials science, which led to practical engineering solutions. He was an outstanding supervisor of doctoral students, who remember him fondly.

Contributions to Dynamic Behaviour of Materials Professor John Edwin Field, FRS 1936–2020

Professor John Edwin Field passed away on October 21st, 2020 at the age of 84. Professor Field was widely regarded as a leader in high-strain rate physics and explosives. During his career in the Physics and Chemistry of Solids (PCS) Group of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, John made major contributions into our understanding of friction and erosion, brittle fracture, explosives, impact and high strain-rate effects in solids, impact in liquids, and shock physics. The contributions made by the PCS group are recognized globally and the impact of John’s work is a lasting addition to our knowledge of the dynamic effects in materials. John graduated 84 Ph.D. students and collaborated broadly in the field. Many who knew him attribute their success to the excellent grounding in research and teaching they received from John Field.

Ernest Rutherford’s ambitions

One of the pioneers of radioactivity research, Rutherford feared his work would be overlooked—and changed his publishing strategies to make sure it wasn’t.

Pressing challenges in halide perovskite photovoltaics—from the atomic to module level

Carlo A.R. Perini is a post-doctoral researcher at Georgia Institute of Technology, Energy Materials Lab. His studies focus on the development and understanding of interface passivation of 3D metal halide perovskites using vapor deposition routes. He has a PhD in Physics at Politecnico di Milano, in collaboration with the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), focused on the study of energy efficient, scalable, and environmentally friendly deposition routes for lead halide perovskites. Tiarnan A. S. Doherty is a PhD student in the Cavendish laboratory at the University of Cambridge working on nanoscale structure property relationships in metal-halide perovskites. He received the gold graduate student award at the Fall Materials Research Society meeting. Samuel D. Stranks is a University Lecturer in Energy and Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge. His group's research focuses on the optical and electronic properties of emerging semiconductors for low-cost, transformative electronics applications including light-harvesting (e.g., photovoltaic) and light-emission (e.g., LED) devices. He received the 2018 Henry Moseley Award and Medal from the Institute of Physics, the 2019 Marlow Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry, and is a co-founder of Swift Solar, a startup developing lightweight perovskite PV panels. Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena is an Assistant Professor and Goizueta Junior Faculty Chair in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. His group focuses on the understanding and control of electronic dynamics at the nanoscale for low-cost semiconductors, such as halide perovskites. He completed his PhD at the University of Connecticut, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at EPFL, Switzerland, then a US Department of Energy postdoctoral fellowship at MIT, USA. Robert L. Z. Hoye is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at Imperial College London. He leads the Energy Materials and Devices group, which is working on developing defect-tolerant semiconductors and their application in optoelectronic devices. This includes tandem photovoltaics, indoor solar cells, and light-emitting diodes. Robert has received the Young Engineer of the Year Award from the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Sir Henry Royce Medal from the Institution of Engineering and Technology, and the Rising Star Award from the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology.

Silicone Polymers—Celebrating 80 Years of the Direct Process

Silicone Polymers—Celebrating 80 Years of the Direct Process

Relaxed Current Matching Requirements in Highly Luminescent Perovskite Tandem Solar Cells and Their Fundamental Efficiency Limits.

Perovskite-based tandem solar cells are of increasing interest as they approach commercialization. Here we use experimental parameters from optical spectroscopy measurements to calculate the limiting efficiency of perovskite–silicon and all-perovskite two-terminal tandems, employing currently available bandgap materials, as 42.0% and 40.8%, respectively. We show luminescence coupling between subcells (the optical transfer of photons from the high-bandgap to low-bandgap subcell) relaxes current matching when the high-bandgap subcell is a luminescent perovskite. We calculate that luminescence coupling becomes important at charge trapping rates (≤106 s–1) already being achieved in relevant halide perovskites. Luminescence coupling increases flexibility in subcell thicknesses and tolerance to different spectral conditions. For maximal benefit, the high-bandgap subcell should have the higher short-circuit current under average spectral conditions. This can be achieved by reducing the bandgap of the high-bandgap subcell, allowing wider, unstable bandgap compositions to be avoided. Lastly, we visualize luminescence coupling in an all-perovskite tandem through cross-section luminescence imaging.

Editorial: Biographical Memoirs, Volume 69

Editorial: Biographical Memoirs, Volume 69