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| Campus | North Haugh, St Andrews, Scotland |
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| Website | www |
The School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of St Andrews is an academic department dedicated to the teaching, research, and dissemination of knowledge in the fields of physics and astronomy. Located on the North Haugh in the historic town of St Andrews, in Fife, Scotland, the school is part of the oldest university in Scotland and the third-oldest in the English-speaking world. [1]
Physics and astronomy have been studied and taught for more than 350 years at the University of St Andrews. Mathematical and astronomical work was integral to the medieval curriculum, and notable figures such as James Gregory, inventor of the Gregorian telescope, held positions at the university. [2] Over the centuries, the disciplines evolved into formal departments within the university. Sir David Brewster worked at the university on optical materials and the polarisation of light, and became principal of the university. [3]
More recently, John F Allen was chair of natural philosophy at the university, [4] laying the foundations for a still very active group investigating the properties of matter at cryogenic temperatures, and installing Scotland's first helium liquefier. The school still operates Scotland's only helium liquefier. During John Allen's time in St Andrews, the North Haugh site was purchased by the university, where the current building of the school is located. [5] The physics department moved to this location in 1965; the building is now named after John F. Allen.
While originally physics and astronomy were taught in separate departments, they were merged in 1987 into the present School of Physics and Astronomy. [6] Today, the school continues a long tradition of inquiry as a leading center for physics and astronomy research.
In 2017, the school was awarded Juno Champion status by the Institute of Physics, [7] [8] and shortly after an Athena SWAN Silver award.
The school strives to provide an education of the highest quality for both undergraduate and postgraduate students, developing the skills and knowledge for a successful career in industry, business or academia. It has modern teaching facilities and a better than average student-to-staff ratio, with all undergraduate degrees accredited by the Institute of Physics. The school has regularly been highly placed in university league tables. For example, from 2017 to 2021 the Guardian University league table had the school four times at number one and once at number two in the UK. [6]
The school's teaching portfolio includes a number of BSc (three to four years) and MPhys (four to five years) degree programmes, [9] plus an MSc programme in Astrophysics. PhD and EngD students in the school benefit from a wide range of technical and skills courses within the SUPA Graduate School, with some postgraduate students also trained within discipline-specific Doctoral Training Centres.
The School of Physics and Astronomy is internationally recognized for its research in its priority areas, [10] [11] including:
Research groups often collaborate with external partners and participate in national and international consortia, such as the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA).
The school maintains telescopes and observing facilities for both research and education, including the Gregory telescope, the largest operating optical telescope in the UK. The school also owns three one-metre robotic telescopes within the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Network. Collaborative agreements with external observatories and space agencies further expand the reach of the department's astronomical research.
For photonics and materials research, the school operates two cleanrooms and specialized laser labs. These cutting-edge environments allow scientists to fabricate and study materials under precisely controlled conditions.
As part of the Centre for Designer Quantum Materials, the school hosts an integrated ultra-high vacuum system with multiple angle-resolved photoemission systems and molecular beam epitaxy systems with in-vacuo transfer of samples to dedicated ultra-low vibration laboratories housing a suite of bespoke low temperature scanning tunneling microscopes.
James Gregory was a Scottish mathematician and astronomer. His surname is sometimes spelt as Gregorie, the original Scottish spelling. He described an early practical design for the reflecting telescope – the Gregorian telescope – and made advances in trigonometry, discovering infinite series representations for several trigonometric functions.
Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer was an English scientist and astronomer. Along with the French scientist Pierre Janssen, he is credited with discovering the gas helium. Lockyer also is remembered for being the founder and first editor of the influential journal Nature.
Emilios T. Harlaftis was an astrophysicist.
John Frank Allen, FRS FRSE was a Canadian physicist. At the same time as Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa in Moscow, Don Misener and Allen independently discovered the superfluid phase of matter in 1937 using liquid helium in the Royal Society Mond Laboratory in Cambridge, England.
The Dunsink Observatory is an astronomical observatory established in 1785 in the townland of Dunsink in the outskirts of the city of Dublin, Ireland.
The Research School of Physics (RSPhys) was established with the creation of the Australian National University (ANU) in 1947. Located at the ANU's main campus in Canberra, the school is one of the four founding research schools in the ANU's Institute of Advanced Studies.
The Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie is a research institute of the Max Planck Society (MPG). It is located in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany near the top of the Königstuhl, adjacent to the historic Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Königstuhl astronomical observatory. The institute primarily conducts basic research in the natural sciences in the field of astronomy.
The Royal Observatory, Edinburgh (ROE) is an astronomical institution located on Blackford Hill in Edinburgh. The site is owned by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). The ROE comprises the UK Astronomy Technology Centre (UK ATC) of STFC, the Institute for Astronomy of the School of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Edinburgh, and the ROE Visitor Centre.
The Gregorian telescope is a type of reflecting telescope designed by Scottish mathematician and astronomer James Gregory in the 17th century, and first built in 1673 by Robert Hooke. James Gregory was a contemporary of Isaac Newton, and both often worked simultaneously on similar projects. Gregory's design was published in 1663 and pre-dates the first practical reflecting telescope, the Newtonian telescope, built by Sir Isaac Newton in 1668. However, Gregory's design was only a theoretical description, and he never actually constructed the telescope. It was not successfully built until five years after Newton's first reflecting telescope.
Mills Observatory is the first purpose-built public astronomical observatory in the UK, located in Dundee, Scotland. Built in 1935, the observatory is classically styled in sandstone and has a distinctive 7 m dome, which houses a Victorian refracting telescope, a small planetarium, and display areas. The dome is one of two made from papier-mâché to survive in the UK, the other being at the Godlee Observatory.
William Byars Samson is a Scottish astronomer, academic, computer scientist and a researcher in the fields of Astronomy, Databases, Artificial Intelligence, and Artificial Life.
Thomas F Krauss is a physics researcher at the University of York, where he is the head of the photonics group and of the nanocentre cleanroom. Before he was head of the school of physics and astronomy at the University of St Andrews. He has several research interests, but is mostly known for his work in the field of photonic crystals, where he made the first demonstration of two-dimensional photonic band-gap effects at optical wavelengths. More recently, his research has been to use slow-light in photonic crystal waveguides in order to improve the performance of optoelectronic components.
Wilson Sibbett was a British physicist noted for his work on ultrashort pulse lasers and Streak cameras. He was the Wardlaw Professor of Physics at St Andrews University.
The James Gregory Telescope was constructed in 1962 by the University of St Andrews. It is of a Schmidt-Cassegrain design and is fitted with a CCD camera. The telescope has very large field of view, compared even to regular 'wide field' designs, and can view 5 square degrees.
Frederick Garnett Watson AM is an English-born astronomer and popular scientist in Australia. He holds the role of Australia's First Astronomer at Large within the Commonwealth Government of Australia, relaying the important aspects of Australian astronomy to the government, the general public, and associated organisations.
Belinda Jane Wilkes is a Senior Astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, and former director of the Chandra X-ray Center.
Lyndsay Fletcher is a Scottish astrophysicist at the University of Glasgow who specialises in solar flares.
Douglas Walter Noble Stibbs FRSE FRAS (1919–2010) was a 20th century Australian astronomer and astrophysicist, remembered for his work at St Andrews University where he held the Napier Chair in Astronomy for 30 years. The Prof Walter Stibbs Lectures at Sydney University are named in his honour.
Gillian Susan Wright is a Scottish astronomer who is currently the director of the UK Astronomy Technology Centre in Edinburgh, UK. She has also been involved in the development and construction of the James Webb Space Telescope as the European Principal Investigator for the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). In 2006 Wright was appointed MBE for services to science.
Jonathan (Joss) Bland-Hawthorn is a British-Australian astrophysicist. He is a Laureate professor of physics at the University of Sydney, and director of the Sydney Institute for Astronomy.
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