Philip Ball | |
---|---|
Born | 1962 (age 61–62) |
Nationality | British |
Alma mater | |
Occupation | Science writer |
Notable work | Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another |
Website | www |
Philip Ball (born 1962) is a British science writer. For over twenty years he has been an editor of the journal Nature , for which he continues to write regularly. [1] He is a regular contributor to Prospect magazine [2] and a columnist for Chemistry World, Nature Materials , and BBC Future.
Ball holds a degree in chemistry from Oxford and a doctorate in physics from Bristol University.
Ball's 2004 book Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another won the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books. It examines a wide range of topics including the business cycle, random walks, phase transitions, bifurcation theory, traffic flow, Zipf's law, Small world phenomenon, catastrophe theory, the Prisoner's dilemma. The overall theme is one of applying modern mathematical models to social and economic phenomena. [3]
In 2011, Ball published The Music Instinct in which he discusses how we make sense of sound and Music and emotion. He outlines what is known and still unknown about how music has such an emotional impact, and why it seems indispensable to humanity. He has since argued that music is emotively powerful due to its ability to mimic humans and through setting up expectations in pitch and harmony and then violating them. [4] [ better source needed ]
Ball has written a research review on organism-centered evolution. [5] [6] He has contributed to publications ranging from New Scientist [7] to The New York Times , The Guardian , the Financial Times , and New Statesman . In June 2004 he presented a three-part serial on nanotechnology, Small Worlds, on BBC Radio 4.
Ball's Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another won the 2005 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books. [16] His book Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics under Hitler was on the shortlist for the 2014 prize. [17]
Ball was awarded the Physics World Book of the Year 2018 for his book Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Thought You Knew About Quantum Physics Is Different. [18]
In 2019 Ball won the Kelvin Medal and Prize.
Ball's article "Should scientists run the country" [19] won the 2022 award from the Association of British Science Writers for the best opinion piece. [20] He was also awarded the Royal Society's 2022 Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal for excellence in a subject relating to the history of science, philosophy of science or the social function of science. [21]
The Nobel Prizes are five separate prizes awarded to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind, as established by the 1895 will of Swedish chemist, engineer, and industrialist Alfred Nobel, in the year before he died. Prizes were first awarded in 1901 by the Nobel Foundation. Nobel's will indicated that the awards should be granted in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace. A sixth prize for Economic Sciences, endowed by Sweden's central bank, Sveriges Riksbank, and first presented in 1969, is also frequently included, as it is also administered by the Nobel Foundation. The Nobel Prizes are widely regarded as the most prestigious awards available in their respective fields.
Physics is the scientific study of matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. Physics is one of the most fundamental scientific disciplines. A scientist who specializes in the field of physics is called a physicist.
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate causes of phenomena, and usually frame their understanding in mathematical terms. They work across a wide range of research fields, spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic and particle physics, through biological physics, to cosmological length scales encompassing the universe as a whole. The field generally includes two types of physicists: experimental physicists who specialize in the observation of natural phenomena and the development and analysis of experiments, and theoretical physicists who specialize in mathematical modeling of physical systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena.
Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into two or three major branches: the natural sciences, which study the physical world; and the behavioural sciences, which study individuals and societies. The formal sciences, which study formal systems governed by axioms and rules, are sometimes described as being sciences as well; however, they are often regarded as a separate field because they rely on deductive reasoning instead of the scientific method or empirical evidence as their main methodology. Applied sciences are disciplines that use scientific knowledge for practical purposes, such as engineering and medicine.
Peter Joseph William Debye was a Dutch-American physicist and physical chemist, and Nobel laureate in Chemistry.
Max Ferdinand Perutz was an Austrian-born British molecular biologist, who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with John Kendrew, for their studies of the structures of haemoglobin and myoglobin. He went on to win the Royal Medal of the Royal Society in 1971 and the Copley Medal in 1979. At Cambridge he founded and chaired (1962–79) The MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), fourteen of whose scientists have won Nobel Prizes.
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Philipp Eduard Anton von Lenard was a Hungarian-German physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1905 "for his work on cathode rays" and the discovery of many of their properties. One of his most important contributions was the experimental realization of the photoelectric effect. He discovered that the energy (speed) of the electrons ejected from a cathode depends only on the frequency, and not the intensity, of the incident light.
Johannes Stark was a German physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1919 "for his discovery of the Doppler effect in canal rays and the splitting of spectral lines in electric fields". This phenomenon is known as the Stark effect.
The Royal Society Science Books Prize is an annual £25,000 prize awarded by the Royal Society to celebrate outstanding popular science books from around the world. It is open to authors of science books written for a non-specialist audience, and since it was established in 1988 has championed writers such as Stephen Hawking, Jared Diamond, Stephen Jay Gould and Bill Bryson. In 2015 The Guardian described the prize as "the most prestigious science book prize in Britain".
Occult Chemistry:Investigations by Clairvoyant Magnification into the Structure of the Atoms of the Periodic Table and Some Compounds is a book written by Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater, who were both members of the Theosophical Society based in Adyar, India. Besant was at the time the President of the Society having succeeded Henry Olcott after his death in 1907.
Nazi Germany undertook several research programs relating to nuclear technology, including nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors, before and during World War II. These were variously called Uranverein or Uranprojekt. The first effort started in April 1939, just months after the discovery of nuclear fission in Berlin in December 1938, but ended only a few months later, shortly ahead of the September 1939 German invasion of Poland, for which many notable German physicists were drafted into the Wehrmacht. A second effort under the administrative purview of the Wehrmacht's Heereswaffenamt began on September 1, 1939, the day of the invasion of Poland. The program eventually expanded into three main efforts: Uranmaschine development, uranium and heavy water production, and uranium isotope separation. Eventually, the German military determined that nuclear fission would not contribute significantly to the war, and in January 1942 the Heereswaffenamt turned the program over to the Reich Research Council while continuing to fund the activity.
The Davy Medal is awarded by the Royal Society of London "for an outstandingly important recent discovery in any branch of chemistry". Named after Humphry Davy, the medal is awarded with a monetary gift, initially of £1000. Receiving the Davy Medal has been identified as a potential precursor to being awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, with 22 scientists as of 2022 having been awarded the medal prior to becoming Nobel laureates, according to an analysis by the Royal Society of Chemistry.
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The Bridgewater Treatises (1833–36) are a series of eight works that were written by leading scientific figures appointed by the President of the Royal Society in fulfilment of a bequest of £8000, made by Francis Henry Egerton, 8th Earl of Bridgewater, for work on "the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation."
Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another, a non-fiction book by English chemist and physicist Philip Ball originally published in 2004, discusses the concept of a "physics of society". Ball discusses thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, Lewis Mumford, Emyr Hughes, and Gottfried Achenwall who have attempted to apply physics, chemistry, or mathematics in the study of mass social phenomena. He also discusses how the concept relates to recent research, including his own.
Patterns in nature are visible regularities of form found in the natural world. These patterns recur in different contexts and can sometimes be modelled mathematically. Natural patterns include symmetries, trees, spirals, meanders, waves, foams, tessellations, cracks and stripes. Early Greek philosophers studied pattern, with Plato, Pythagoras and Empedocles attempting to explain order in nature. The modern understanding of visible patterns developed gradually over time.
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