The Fasor Lutheran Secondary School of Budapest distinguished as EPS Historic Site

“The fear of the lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.”
This is the motto of the Fasor Lutheran Secondary School of Budapest, Hungary, which was recently recognised as an EPS Historic Site. This school has proved to be very successful in finding and encouraging talent: Both Eugene Wigner (Nobel Prize in physics, 1963) and John von Neumann attended the school and learned the basics of science there.

Nuclear Physics for Medicine

Particle accelerators, digital data acquisition, isotope technology, sophisticated detector systems with imaging software… You can find these instruments in a high tech physics research laboratory, or, if you look a bit closer, in a modern hospital as well.

Modern healthcare from diagnostics to therapy is largely based on physics. That is why NuPECC, the Nuclear Physics Expert Committee of the European Science Foundation compiled a report on the impact of nuclear physics in medicine.

To catch a thief

Back in the 1950s, when the neutrino was still a hypothesis but iron curtain was a reality, A. Szalay in Hungary had an idea to take a snapshot of an event that would prove the existence of the neutrino. During his research at Cavendish Laboratory (United Kingdom), he became acquainted with the latest techniques for research in nuclear physics, and decided to investigate the decay of ⁶He, a short lived isotope. He recruited J. Csikai, then a young scientist, and together they built a cloud chamber with a sophisticated stereo-camera system.
Forget about megapixels, data acquisition system, everything was hardwired. Still, from the tracks…

Editorial – Further structuring contacts within the EPS

Physics is a broad subject, but we are all aware of the way that it is divided into various themes, sometimes very different from each other, sometimes overlapping. Indeed, even when we publish our research, we are guided by schemes such as PACS, which has evolved over the years to encompass all areas of physics.
Within the European Physical Society [EPS], the technical organisation in terms of divisions and groups is similarly structured and has also evolved to cover all subjects in physics as well as areas of common interest such as Physics Education. This provides Individual Members of the EPS with the opportunity to interact with, and network with…

Editorial – Science communication: our duty

Dear Readers,

We physicists are positive that physics is the most important thing in life. We take for granted the notion that without the achievements of physics, industry, technology and even human life itself would be less productive.

We have to face the fact, however, that we are not alone. It is hard to find physicists amongst the decision makers at government levels, and even scientific policy makers may not consider physics as important as we do…

Lise Meitner Prize for nuclear science awarded

The 2012 Lise Meitner Prize has been jointly awarded to Karlheinz Langanke, of GSI and TU Darmstadt, and Friedrich-Karl Thielemann of the University of Basel, for “their seminal contributions to the description of nuclear processes in astrophysical environments that have changed our modern understanding of stellar evolution, supernovae explosions and nucleosynthesis.”

The Lise Meitner Prize is given biennially by the Nuclear Physics Division…

Week of Innovative Regions in Europe 2011

The Week of Innovative Regions in Europe 2011 (WIRE2011) conference – which was dedicated to possible relationships between research infrastructures and cluster policy, was held between 7-9 June 2011 in Debrecen, Hungary. The event was supported by the Hungarian EU Council Presidency and was jointly organised with the European Commission.

The conference – which considered the documents ‘EUROPE 2020, a strategy for a smart, sustainable and inclusive development strategy’ and the ‘Innovation Union Flagship Initiative‘ – focused on questions related to knowledge, innovation and competitiveness in economy, with respect to research infrastructure investments, clusters and…