Astronomy Envy
In 1998 the Department of Physics at the University of Nottingham was struggling in both research and undergraduate recruitment. To remedy the situation it decided to add a new group in Astronomy. The main idea was that having astronomy in its portfolio would attract more students and boost its standing in the Research Assessment Exercise (as it was then called). I was one of the people appointed to turn that decision into reality, and I’m glad to say the result was a success. Undergraduate numbers increased and in the next RAE Nottingham Physics scored a ‘5’, compared to the previous ‘4’. The Astronomy group quickly gained recognition across the UK and abroad, and another group was added, in Astroparticle Physics.
When the new Astronomy group was set up in 1999, the Department of Physics changed its name to the School of Physics & Astronomy. Despite the positive effect of this new activity, it was immediately clear that some members of staff resented it. A new letterhead was created, referring to the School of Physics & Astronomy, and one (very distinguished) senior member of the former Department always crossed off the “and Astronomy” whenever he used it. Others were surprised that the astronomers wanted to do research, when they felt that astronomy was just a bit of window-dressing for undergraduate recruitment. The astronomers were just there to do teaching, so that the “proper physicists” – mostly in semiconductor physics, nanoscience and other areas of condensed matter physics – could spend more time in their laboratories. I’m not saying that every physicist thought this – most were genuinely appreciative and supportive – but there were more than a few grumblers.
The undertone of all this is the envy that some physicists feel towards astronomy. Astronomers get invited to talk about their work to the general public and to amateur astronomy clubs, while there are no such calls for semiconductor physicists. Nobel prizes go to cosmology and astrophysics much more frequently than some would like. Above all there is the view that astronomy is all very well for bringing students in, but once at university the students must be converted to “proper physics”. Astronomers (including astrophysicists and cosmologists) should not get “notions” (as the Irish say). The short-sighted view that scientific research in universities should be aimed at short-term commercial gain amplifies this attitude, but does not entirely account for it.
These thoughts have been at the back of my mind for some time, but they came to the front again with the recent news about cuts to STFC funding. The callous attitude shown to the UK astronomy research community, implying that it should be grateful that it is not being cut by more than the disastrous level announced, indicates (to me) that there’s much more to what is going on than a mere budgetary issue. There is a deliberate plan to slap down a community that has grown too big for its boots.
The consequences for UK astronomy, and UK physics in general, are dire. Astronomy has kept many physics departments afloat for the last several decades. Without it, physics will fail in all but a handful of universities. That’s where envy takes you.
In the Dark 
July 30, 2026 at 11:45 am
I have heard similar comments in the past about particle physicists from the same people. I’m not quite sure why they dislike us – is it because they think they can get our money for their own research? Thats not what where its going as far as I can tell – lots of new money for AI (1.6 billion) and ARIA (also large amount, which they don’t even spend….)
July 30, 2026 at 12:24 pm
Yes, I’m sure this is true of particle physics too but I have less direct experience of that.
I remember the former President of the Learned Society of Wales, an organization whose stated aim is ‘to champion academic excellence across disciplines’ stating very publicly that he thought CERN was a waste of money. He was a chemist.
July 31, 2026 at 12:12 am
If we are going to play that game then chemistry barely exists as a research subject any more. It is now either biochemistry or orbital physics. (Chemists please note: I respect both.) The latter aspect puts me in mind of Dirac’s comment that his quantum mechanics is the basis for “a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry” (Proc Roy Soc A123 p714, 1929; incidentally this isn’t the great paper in which he factorised the Klein-Gordon operator using nonscalars, and thereby introduced the equation that now bears his name and explained electron spin – that was a year earlier).
July 31, 2026 at 11:14 am
I think investment in astronomy was also because it was seen as ‘cheap’ compared to lab-based topics. Basically all the researcher would need is an office and a computer to reduce and analyse data, which would be obtained at central facilities that would bear the cost of data collection rather than the university. (The exception would be areas like instrumentation develoment, or laboratory astrophysics). Yet for e.g. UKRI funding they would still be funded as a ‘lab based’ subject. I have certainly met fellow physicists who think astrophysics is not in the same ‘league’ as ‘real’ lab-based physics.
July 31, 2026 at 3:26 pm
[…] Peter Coles points out, I fear with some justification, that the recent STFC cuts to high-profile fields of physics like astronomy, cosmology, and particle physics, might h…. […]