Finding new drugs these days is largely done with quantum mechanics. Fifty years ago it was more like what the Brits (and the indie rock band Arctic Monkeys) call suck-it-and-see. So thousands of Americans don’t know that they have arms and legs and normal lives thanks to the courage of a Canadian—and American—physician. She says […]
Okay, this is not about Sochi. It’s about racial distinctions, and what physics can contribute to out understanding of them. ‘Race’ once referred to a group with a common line of descent. But over time it became less clear. Nineteenth-century racial distinctions were built on emerging sciences of linguistics and physical anthropology. Many scientists were […]
Arthur (latterly Sir Arthur) Conan Doyle, a practising physician, surgeon and ophthalmologist is well known for his fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes. I, too, am a fan. Doyle is less known for the sharp eye that he kept on physics. It shows up in the way his fiction promotes then-new physics-based ideas. Through the 1900s these […]