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R.I.P. Sir Sam Edwards

Posted in Biographical, Education, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , on May 12, 2015 by telescoper

I’ve only found out this morning that Professor Sir Sam Edwards passed away last week, on 7th May 2015 at the age of 87. Although I didn’t really know him at all on a personal level, I did come across him when I was an undergraduate student at the University of Cambridge in the 1980s, so I thought I would post a brief item to mark his passing and to pay my respects.

Sam Edwards taught a second-year course at Cambridge to Physics students,entitled Analytical Dynamics as a component of Part IB Advanced Physics. It would have been in 1984 that I took it. If memory serves, which is admittedly rather unlikely, this lecture course was optional and intended for those of us who intended to follow theoretical physics Part II, i.e. in the third year.
I have to admit that Sam Edwards was far from the best lecturer I’ve ever had, and I know I’m not alone in that opinion. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, his lectures were largely incomprehensible and attendance at them fell sharply after the first few. They were, however, based on an excellent set of typewritten notes from which I learned a lot. It wasn’t at all usual for lecturers to hand out printed lecture notes in those days, but I am glad he did. In fact, I still have them now. Here is the first page:

Sam_Edwards

It’s quite heavy stuff, but enormously useful. I have drawn on a few of the examples contained in his handout for my own lectures on related concepts in theoretical physics, so in a sense my students are gaining some benefit from his legacy.

At the time I was an undergraduate student I didn’t know much about the research interests of the lecturers, but I was fascinated to read in his Guardian obituary how much he contributed to the theoretical development of the field of soft condensed matter, which includes the physics of polymers. In those days – I was at Cambridge from 1982 to 1985 – this was a relatively small part of the activity in the Cavendish laboratory but it has grown substantially over the years.

I feel a bit guilty that I didn’t appreciate more at the time what a distinguished physicist he was, but he undoubtedly played a significant part in the environment at Cambridge that gave me such a good start in my own scientific career and was held in enormously high regard by friends and colleagues at Cambridge and beyond.

Rest in peace, Sir Sam Edwards (1928-2015).

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Essays in Physics

Posted in Biographical, Education with tags , , , , , , on March 6, 2015 by telescoper

In the course of a rare episode of tidying-up in my office I came across this. You can click on it to make it bigger if it’s difficult to read. It was the first paper of my finals examination at the University of Cambridge way back in 1985. Yes, that really was thirty years ago…

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As you can probably infer from the little circle around number 4, I decided to write an Essay about topic 4. I’ve always been interested in detective stories so this was an easy choice for me, but I have absolutely no idea what I wrote about for three hours. Nor do I recall actually ever getting a mark for the essay, so I never really knew whether it really counted for anything. I do remember, however, that I had another 3-hour examination in the afternoon of the same day, two three-hour examinations the following day, and would have had two the day after that had I not elected to do a theory project which let me off one paper at the end.

I survived this rigorous diet of examinations (more-or-less) and later that year moved to Sussex to start my DPhil, returning here couple of years ago as Head of the same School in which I did my graduate studies. To add further proof that the universe is cyclic, this year I’ve taken on the job of being External Examiner for physics at the University of Cambridge, the same place I did my undergraduate studies.

Anyway, to get back to the essay paper, we certainly don’t set essay examinations like that here in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Sussex and I suspect they no longer do so in the Department of Physics at Cambridge. I don’t really see the point of making students write such things under examination conditions. On the other hand, I do have an essay as part of the coursework in my 2nd Year Theoretical Physics module. That may seem surprising and I’m not sure the students like the idea, but the reason for having it is that theoretical physics students don’t do experimental work in the second year so they don’t get the chance to develop their writing skills through lab reports. The essay titles I set are much more specific than those listed in the paper above and linked very closely to the topics covered in the lectures, but it’s still an opportunity for physics students to practice writing and getting some feedback on their efforts. Incidentally, some of the submissions last year were outstandingly good and I’m actually quite looking forward to reading this year’s crop!

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Infinities in Cosmology

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on February 7, 2013 by telescoper

Only time to post a quick advertisement I received in an email from the one of the organizers of a 4-day series of talks on Infinities in Cosmology, at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP), Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge, from 18-21 March 2013.

This is one in a series of thematic programmes on Cosmology and Philosophy organised by a collaboration of cosmologists and philosophers of science at Oxford and Cambridge Universities. Speakers include A. Aguirre, M. Dafermos, M.R. Douglas, G.F.R. Ellis, M. Hogarth, and S. Saunders.

This is taken from the conference website:

Cosmology involves infinities, or at least the prospect of infinities, in various ways: the most obvious being the potentially infinite age and size of the universe, and the possible occurrence of actual infinities at local spacetime singularities or at the beginning of the Universe. But there are also other kinds of infinity to consider; for example, the possibility of enhanced spatiotemporal scope for computation, or the unlimited proliferation inherent in the concept of the multiverse and the problems encountered in defining probabilities in this context. These topics will be explored in this three-day series and the following full-day workshop.

Looks quite interesting to me, although I don’t think I’ll be able to make time to go!

Further details and online registration for the conference are now available at

http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/events/infinities2013/

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Part IB Maths for Natural Sciences, from 1984

Posted in Biographical, Education with tags , , , , on October 7, 2012 by telescoper

I’ve been rummaging through my old second-year undergraduate notes and papers trying to compare what I did when I was a student with what we’re asking current second-year undergraduates to do. Since I’m now teaching a fairly mathematical second-year course, it is interesting to look at how the content compares with the Mathematics papers I took way back in 1984.

Looking at these two examinations it’s clear that some of the content is similar (e.g. vector calculus, Fourier transforms) but some big things are entirely missing from our second-year syllabus, specifically Laplace transforms and group theory. The absence of the latter is a matter of particular regret because it’s such a beautiful subject that I think leads onto a deeper understanding of physics than a lot of the other things we make the students learn.

The other striking thing is that the marks for different bits of the questions are not given. That was standard in my day, but nowadays we usually indicate how many marks are available for each part. Moreover, the style of examination is such that even the number of correct answers needed for full marks isn’t given; it just says “You are advised to answer complete questions rather than fragments”.

Anyway, as usual, I’d be interested in comments on the content and difficulty especially from current students in the unlikely event that they have nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon than have a look at it! For my part, I’ll be in the department getting next week’s lecture materials sorted. Heigh-ho.

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