̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Michael Green

Female scientists lead Cambridge success in Royal Society awards 2021

ta385 — Tue, 24 Aug 2021 12:00:00 +0000

Bell Burnell is one of twelve former and current Cambridge researchers, including six women, to be recognised in 2021 for their exceptional research and outstanding contributions to science.

Dame Jocelyn has been honoured for her work on the discovery of pulsars in the 1960s while she was a postgraduate student at New Hall (now Murray Edwards College) carrying out research at Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory.

Past winners of the Copley Medal have included Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin. Dame Jocelyn said: “I am delighted to be the recipient of this year’s Copley Medal, a prize which has been awarded to so many incredible scientists.

“With many more women having successful careers in science, and gaining recognition for their transformational work, I hope there will be many more female Copley winners in the near future.

“My career has not fitted a conventional – male – pattern. Being the first person to identify pulsars would be the highlight of any career; but I have also swung sledgehammers and built radio telescopes; set up a successful group of my own studying binary stars; and was the first female president of the Institute of Physics and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

“I hope that my work and presence as a senior woman in science continues to encourage more women to pursue scientific careers”.

̽��ֱ��Copley Medal award includes a £25,000 gift which Dame Jocelyn will add to the Institute of Physics' Bell Burnell Graduate Scholarship Fund, which provides grants to graduate students from under-represented groups in physics.

Three female scientists currently working at Cambridge have been recognised in 2021. Professor Sadaf Farooqi from the MRC Metabolic Diseases Unit receives the Croonian Medal and Lecture, together with Sir Stephen O'Rahilly, for their seminal discoveries regarding the control of human body weight, resulting in novel diagnostics and therapies, which improve human health.

Dr Serena Nik-Zainal from the MRC Cancer Unit has been awarded the Francis Crick Medal and Lecture, for her contributions to understanding the aetiology of cancers by her analyses of mutation signatures in cancer genomes, which is now being applied to cancer therapy.

Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith from the Department of Genetics and currently the ̽��ֱ��’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research receives the Buchanan Medal, for her pioneering work in epigenetics, her interdisciplinary work on genomic imprinting, the interplay between the genome and epigenome, and how genetic and environmental influences affect development and human diseases.

Former Cavendish Laboratory Research Fellow, Professor Michelle Simmons, has won the Bakerian Medal and Lecture, for her seminal contributions to our understanding of nature at the atomic-scale by creating a sequence of world-first quantum electronic devices in which individual atoms control device behaviour.

Professor Frances Kirwan, alumna and Honorary Fellow of Clare College, received the Sylvester Medal, for her research on quotients in algebraic geometry, including links with symplectic geometry and topology, which has had many applications.

Other current Cambridge researchers honoured include Dr Sjors Scheres from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Scheres has been awarded the Leeuwenhoek Medal and Lecture for his ground-breaking contributions and innovations in image analysis and reconstruction methods in electron cryo-microscopy, enabling the structure determination of complex macromolecules of fundamental biological and medical importance to atomic resolution.

Emeritus Professor Michael Green from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics has been awarded Royal Medal A for crucial and influential contributions to the development of string theory over a long period, including the discovery of anomaly cancellation.

̽��ֱ��Royal Society’s President, Sir Adrian Smith, said: “Through its medals and awards the Royal Society recognises those researchers and science communicators who have played a critical part in expanding our understanding of the world around us.”

“From advancing vaccine development to catching the first glimpses of distant pulsars, these discoveries shape our societies, answer fundamental questions and open new avenues for exploration.”

Find the full list of 2021 Royal Society medal, award and prize winners here.

Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell has become only the second woman to be awarded the Royal Society’s prestigious Copley Medal, the world’s oldest scientific prize.

I hope there will be many more female Copley winners in the near future

Jocelyn Bell Burnell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_3zNw91MSY

Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell

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Michael Cates elected 19th Lucasian Professor

th288 — Fri, 20 Mar 2015 16:45:38 +0000

Professor Cates is currently Professor of Natural Philosophy and Royal Society Research Professor at the ̽��ֱ�� of Edinburgh.

Soft matter is a description of a large class of materials, such as polymers, gels, and liquid crystals, which lack the crystalline order of the solid state and are easily deformed by external forces, leading to complex and nonlinear behaviour requiring new mathematical insights for their description.

̽��ֱ��field of soft matter is highly interdisciplinary, bringing together methods from areas such as elasticity, fluid mechanics, statistical mechanics, and computational science. In recent years it has expanded to address many problems in biology, including the properties of cellular cytoskeletons and collective behaviour of motile cells.

Professor Cates is renowned for his work over the past thirty years on an extremely broad range of problems in soft matter, from the dynamics of `living polymers’ and polymer brushes to the nature of the glass transition, at which a previously liquid-like material locks into an amorphous solid structure.

He has also been instrumental in bringing large-scale computational methods to bear on highly nonequilibrium problems in soft matter, and often works closely with experimentalists in both formulating and testing theoretical predictions.

His work has been recognised by many major awards, including the Dirac Medal and Prize of the Institute of Physics, the Pierre Gille de Gennes Lecture Prize of the European Physical Journal and the Weissenberg Award of the European Society of Rheology.

More recently, Professor Cates has made important contributions to the burgeoning field of `active matter’, which explores the dynamics and self-organization of systems composed of self-propelled objects.

These can range from engineered colloidal microparticles to swimming bacteria.

Peter Haynes, Head of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, said: “ ̽��ֱ��appointment of Michael Cates as Lucasian Professor continues the very distinguished tradition of that post. Professor Cates will bring a new and important scientific area to academic activities in our Department and his presence as Lucasian Professor will offer a whole range of new collaborative possibilities, both within our own Department and with several others in the ̽��ֱ��”

̽��ֱ��Lucasian Professorship has an exceptionally long and distinguished history, established in 1663 and with previous holders including Isaac Newton (1669-1702), and, more recently, Paul Dirac (1932-1969), James Lighthill (1969-1979), Stephen Hawking (1979-2009) and Michael Green (2009-2013).

Professor Cates will take up the Lucasian Professorship on 1 July 2015.

Professor Michael Cates FRS, FRSE, a distinguished theoretical physicist who is a world leader in the study of soft matter, has been elected the 19th holder of the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, succeeding Professor Michael Green.

Professor Cates will bring a new and important scientific area to academic activities in our Department

Peter Haynes

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Strings that surprise: how a theory scaled up

amb206 — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 09:44:10 +0000

In December 2013 Professor Michael Green of Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� and Professor John Schwarz of California Institute of Technology were awarded the 2014 Fundamental Physics Prize, one of a series of annual 'Breakthrough Prizes' set up to raise the profile of the physical and biological sciences. Their shared $3 mn prize was given for “opening new perspectives on quantum gravity and the unification of forces”.

Green and Schwarz are known for their pioneering work in string theory, postulated as a way of explaining the fundamental constituents of the universe as tiny vibrating strings. Different types of elementary particles arise in this theory as different vibrational harmonics (or ‘notes’). ̽��ֱ��scope of string theory has broadened over the past few years and is currently being applied to a far wider field than that for which it was first devised, which has taken those who research into it in unexpected directions.

Although the term ‘string theory’ was not coined till 1971, it had its genesis in a paper by the Italian physicist Gabriele Veneziano in 1968, published when Green was a research student in Cambridge. Green was rapidly impressed by its potential and began working seriously on it in the early 1970s. As he explains in the accompanying film, he stuck with string theory during a period when it was overshadowed by other developments in elementary particle physics.

As a result of a chance meeting at the CERN accelerator laboratory in Switzerland in the summer of 1979, Green (then a researcher at Queen Mary, London) began to work on string theory with Schwarz. Green says that the relative absence of interest in string theory during the 1970s and early 1980s was actually helpful: it allowed him and a small number of colleagues to focus on their research well away from the limelight.

“Initially we were not sure that the theory would be consistent, but as we understood it better we became more and more convinced that the theory had something valuable to say about the fundamental particles and their forces,” he says.

In August 1984 the two researchers, while working at the Aspen Center for Physics in Colorado, famously understood how string theory avoids certain inconsistencies (known as ‘anomalies’) that plague more conventional theories in which the fundamental particles are points rather than strings. This convinced other researchers of the potential of string theory as an elegant unified description of fundamental physics.

“Suddenly our world changed - and we were called on to give lectures and attend meetings and workshops,” remembers Green.

String theory was back on track as a construct that offered a compelling explanation for the fundamental building blocks of the universe: many researchers shifted the focus of their work into this newly-promising field and, as a result of this upturn in interest, developments in string theory began to take new and unexpected directions.

Ideas formulated in the past few years, indicate that string theory has an overarching mathematical structure that may be useful for understanding a much wider variety of problems in theoretical physics that the theory was originally supposed to explain – this includes problems in condensed matter, superconductivity, plasma physics and the physics of fluids.

Green is a passionate believer in the exchange of ideas and he values immensely his interaction with the latest generation of researchers to be tackling some of the knottiest problems in particle physics and associated fields.

“ ̽��ֱ��best ideas come from the young people entering the field and we need to make sure we continue to attract them into research. It is particularly evident that at present we fail to encourage sufficient numbers of young women to think about careers in physics,” he says. “Scientific research is by its nature competitive and there are, of course, professional jealousies - but there’s also a strong tradition of collaboration in theoretical physics and advances in the subject feel like a communal activity.”

In 2009 Green was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. It comes with a legacy that Green describes as daunting: his immediate predecessor was Professor Stephen Hawking and in its 350-year history the chair has been held by a series of formidable names in the history of mathematical sciences.

̽��ֱ��challenges of pushing forward the boundaries in a field that demands thinking in not three dimensions but as many as 11 are tremendous. ̽��ֱ��explanation of the basic building blocks of nature as different harmonics of a string is only a small part of string theory – and is the feature that is easiest to put across to the general public as it is relatively straightforward to visualise.

“Far harder to articulate in words are concepts to do with explaining how time and space might emerge from the theory,” says Green. “Sometimes you hit a problem that you just can’t get out of your head and carry round with you wherever you are. It’s almost a cliché that it’s often when you’re relaxing that a solution will spontaneously present itself.”

Like his colleagues Green is motivated by wonderment at the world and the excitement of being part of a close community grappling with fundamental questions. He is often asked to justify the cost of research that can seem so remote from everyday life, and that cannot be tested in any conventional sense. In response he gives the example of the way in which quantum mechanics has revolutionised the way in which many of us live.

In terms of developments that may come from advances in string theory, he says: “We can’t predict what the eventual outcomes of our research will be. But, if we are successful, they will certainly be huge - and in the meantime, string theory provides a constant stream of unexpected surprises.”

Michael Green will be giving a lecture – ‘ ̽��ֱ��pointless Universe’ – as part of Cambridge Science Festival on Thursday 13 March, 5pm-6pm, at Lady Mitchell Hall, Sidgwick Site, Cambridge. ̽��ֱ��event is free but requires pre-booking.

For more information about this story contact Alexandra Buxton, Office of Communications, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, amb206@admin.cam.ac.uk 01223 761673

In August 1984 two physicists arrived at a formula that transformed our understanding of string theory, an achievement now recognised by a major award. Professor Michael Green of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics explains how string theory has taken unexpected directions.

We can’t predict what the eventual outcomes of our research will be. But, if we are successful, they will certainly be huge.

Michael Green

Strings that surprise: how a theory progressed

Johnny Settle

Strings

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Professor Michael Green awarded the 2014 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics

bjb42 — Thu, 12 Dec 2013 09:22:38 +0000

Professor Green is a member of the High Energy Physics research group at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. His interests are in particle physics with special emphasis on the interface between string theory, quantum field theory, and quantum gravity. Speaking about the award, he said that he was "delighted and flattered" to have won. "I feel really fortunate to have been able to contribute, along with many others, to developments in string theory, which has provided such an inspiring succession of novel insights into fundamental physics and mathematics.”

̽��ֱ��names of the 2014 Breakthrough Prize winners in Fundamental Physics and Life Sciences were unveiled at an exclusive ceremony at the NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View, CA. At a total awarded amount of $21 million, sponsored by Sergey Brin & Anne Wojcicki, Jack Ma & Cathy Zhang, Yuri & Julia Milner and Mark Zuckerberg & Priscilla Chan, the prizes aim to celebrate scientists and generate excitement about the pursuit of science as a career.

“ ̽��ֱ��Breakthrough Prize is our effort to put the spotlight on these amazing heroes. Their work in physics and genetics, cosmology, neurology and mathematics will change lives for generations and we are excited to celebrate them,” commented Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook.

Professor Michael Green, FRS, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, has been jointly awarded the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics with Professor John H. Schwarz, California Institute of Technology, for opening new perspectives on quantum gravity and the unification of forces.

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Professor Michael Green awarded the 2014 Frontiers Prize for Fundamental Physics

bjb42 — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 09:24:03 +0000

̽��ֱ��prize has been awarded in recognition of the new perspectives they have brought to quantum gravity and the unification of the fundamental physical forces of the universe. ̽��ֱ��prize comes with eligibility for the $3 million 2014 Fundamental Physics Prize.

Professor Michael Green, FRS, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, has been awarded one of the three 2014 Frontiers Prizes for Fundamental Physics to be shared with John Schwarz, the Harold Brown Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech, USA.

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