News

Meeting a Master

Graham spent yesterday at the University of Utrecht talking with one of the grandmasters of modern theoretical physics, Gerard ‘t Hooft. In a wide-ranging interview for Graham’s next book, the Dutch scientist reflected on the development of quantum field theory since 1970 and on his thinking about current physics.

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t Hooft

‘Smashing Physics’ reviewed

In today’s edition of The Guardian, Graham reviews the new book by UCL Professor Jon Butterworth on life as a CERN experimentalist and the hunt for the Higgs boson.

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Book Cover

Scientific American podcast on ‘Churchill’s Bomb’ released

Last summer in New York City, Graham recorded this interview about his new book with Steve Mirsky of Scientific American.
 
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Selfie by Steve Mirsk

Selfie of Steve Mirsky, a life-long Yankees fan.

Dirac’s Quantum interviews now online

Dirac’s recollections of the history of quantum theory, given in five interviews with Thomas Kuhn and Eugene Wigner in 1962-3, are now available online.

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Dirac

1962, Yeshiva University

HG Wells – a hundred years since he coined ‘atomic bombs’

Graham and Wells’ biographer Michael Sherborne talk with the Guardian’s literary editor Claire Armitstead about the 1914 novel The World Set Free, which introduced ‘atomic bombs’ and the concept of a catastrophic nuclear war.

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HG Wells, April 1914

HG Wells, April 1914

Nobel interview in Belgium

Today Graham interviewed Baron François Englert, winner with Peter Higgs of the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics, at the opening session of the Science Centre World Summit in Mechelen, Belgium.

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Baron François Englert and Graham

Max Planck letter to Hitler discovered

A remarkable letter, written in October 1944 to Hitler by Max Planck, has recently come to light and been passed to Graham. In the note, the discoverer of the energy quantum pleads for the life of his son Erwin, who was involved in the attempted to kill Hitler three months before. Max Planck had already lost his eldest son, who was killed in the Battle of Verdun, during World War I.

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Max Planck

Hitler

The Dirac family – by a friendly neighbour in Cambridge

New insights into the extraordinary Dirac family emerge in a remarkable letter by Rosemary McGregor-Wood, who lived directly opposite them in Cavendish Avenue.

 
Dirac Family 1949

Dirac family in c. 1946

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Was Churchill a Nuclear Visionary?

In Churchill’s last great speech in the House of Commons, on 1 March 1955, he claimed he had ‘tried to follow and even predict’ applications of nuclear science. In Graham’s first blog for the Huffington Post, he asks whether Churchill really was a nuclear visionary
 
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‘Churchill’s Bomb’ reviewed in ‘Foreign Affairs’

The journal Foreign Affairs has selected Churchill’s Bomb as its Book of the Day, having invited Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman to review it. Freedman describes the book as ‘terrific’:
 
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