The American Physical Society comes to Europe
The American Physical Society [APS] held its Executive Board Retreat at Chicheley Hall (Buckinghamshire, UK), home of the Kavli Royal Society International Centre. This is the first time in history that APS has held its Executive Board Retreat in Europe. On Monday 17 June, a special international session was organized with representatives of European Societies, namely from the Institute of Physics [IoP], the German Physical Society [DPG] and the European Physical Society [EPS], with the goal to “better understand each others’ interests and discuss new…
CERN Council hosts EPS presentation on the impact of physics to the economies of Europe
On 21 June 2013, at the open session of the CERN Council, EPS Vice president L. Cifarelli was invited by CERN Council President A. Zalewska to make a presentation of the recent independent analysis commissioned by EPS from the Centre for Economics and Business Research [Cebr] on the importance of physics – in terms of physics-based industries – to the economies of Europe.
The report, using statistics available in the public domain through Eurostat, covers 29 European countries…
Lecture Notes of the Joint EPS-SIF School on Energy
The first course of the Joint EPS-SIF International School on Energy was successfully held in Varenna, Italy, in the 2012 summer.
The course, centred on “New Strategies for Energy Generation, Conversion and Storage”, gathered a vigorous team of over 15 lecturers who all provided in due time their valuable lecture notes. These have been collected in a volume edited by L. Cifarelli, F. Wagner and D.S. Wiersma, and produced in print by Società Italiana di Fisica [SIF]…
Assisting education in the EU countries under serious economic pressure
The EPS Executive Committee supports a widespread dissemination through its e-EPS newsletter of the following appeal, which is integrally reproduced.
Dear Colleagues,
please consider our initiative which is open on support-education-eu.itp.uni-heidelberg.de trying to assist education in the EU countries affected by serious economic pressure. We should like to ask you to sign it, and it would be…
A “wireless” historic site
On 26 May 2013, a new EPS Historic Site was inaugurated in Pontecchio di Sasso Marconi (Bologna), Italy, the 6th since the beginning of this EPS initiative.
The site is “Villa Griffone”, located on the hills nearby Bologna, a beautiful residence, which belonged to the Marconi family. The inauguration of this historic site is meant to pay a tribute to the very early experimental physics work of Guglielmo Marconi. Aged only 21, in 1895 he succeeded to establish the first long range electromagnetic wave…
Open Access: a general concern
As reported in our previous e-EPS issue, the European Physical Society [EPS] has started a discussion and survey among the European scientific learned societies concerning Open Access.
Today the transition from the current subscription-based system for scientific journals (or from the frequently adopted hybrid author pays/subscription-based system) to full open access is a serious concern. Very recently a statement precisely on the transition to open access was published by Science Europe…
A historic view from Galilei’s window in Arcetri
On 17 May 2013, a new EPS Historic Site was inaugurated in Florence, Italy.
The site is the “Hill of Arcetri”, rich in buildings of considerable historical and scientific interest:
- the former Institute of Physics where, in 1926 Enrico Fermi wrote his fundamental work on the statistics that bears his name, and where young Gilberto Bernardini, first President and founder of the EPS…
Fostering APS-EPS collaboration through CISA meetings
The spring meeting of the Committee for International Scientific Affairs [CISA] of the American Physical Society [APS] took place in Washington DC, on 11 May 2013. The meeting was attended by Luisa Cifarelli as EPS representative.
In a very lively and friendly atmosphere, based on “elective affinities” between the two societies, many relevant matters were discussed. The meeting, organized by Amy Flatten, APS Director for Scientific Affairs, was chaired by Alan Hurd and attended, in particular, by the Chairs (past and elect) of the APS Forum on International Physics [FIP]…
Cyprus Physicists Society to join the European Physical Society
The Cyprus Physicists Society [CPS] was presented at EPS Council 2013 as a possible new – the 42nd – Member Society of the EPS.
The CPS president, Dr. Manolis Lioudadkis illustrated the history, membership and activities of this small society. With around 300 members, mostly pre-university teachers, the CPS is engaged in many education and outreach programmes, such as F1 for schools and the International Physics Olympiads…
The EPS Edison Volta Prize: double celebration
At EPS Council in Strasbourg, on 5 April 2013, the award ceremony of the EPS Edison Volta Prize 2012 took place in the presence of two of the three winners: Rolf Dieter Heuer and Stephen Myers.
The European Physical Society, the Centro di Cultura Scientifica “Alessandro Volta”, Como, Italy (birth town of A. Volta) and EDISON, Milan, Italy (Europe’s oldest energy company, founded in 1884) established the EPS Edison Volta Prize to promote excellent research and achievement in physics…
EPS and EuCheMS are joining forces
On the occasion of the EPS Council 2013 in Strasbourg, a memorandum of understanding [MoU] was signed between the European Association for Chemical and Molecular Societies [EuCheMS] and the European Physical Society [EPS] by presidents Ulrich Schubert and Luisa Cifarelli.
EuCheMS and EPS share many objectives, such as community building, scientific excellence, communication and representation of their respective members to European policy makers. The two Societies recognise that issues in…
Asia-Europe cooperation meetings in Japan in four months from now
The 3rd Asia-Europe Physics Summit [ASEPS3] will take place from 14-19 July 2013 in Chiba, Japan as part of the 12th Asia Pacific Physics Conference [APPC12]. The Summit is organised by the Association of Asia Pacific Physical Societies [AAPPS] and the European Physical Society [EPS].
APPC 12 is a broad spectrum conference devoted to all fields of physics and will include among its plenary speakers two Nobel laureates…
