Archive for University of Manchester

Einstein’s First Lecture in Britain

Posted in Biographical, History, The Universe and Stuff with tags , on September 12, 2025 by telescoper

Tidying a few things up ahead of the start of term I discovered this old clipping, yellowed with age, and decided to scan it before it disintegrates entirely:

It is from the (then) Manchester Guardian which is now known as the Grauniad. The article is dated 1st October 1921, which implies that the talk must have been on the afternoon of Friday 30th September 1921. However, the University of Manchester website states that the talk was on June 9th 1921. During his visit, Einstein was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science by the University of Manchester, which is recorded here as having been presented on June 8th, so it appears the Guardian piece was published some time after the event. As usual, Einstein gave his lecture – to a packed house – entirely in German, as he did when he lectured in Nottingham almost a decade later.

Einstein was already famous by 1921 – largely thanks to the 1919 Eclipse results (see, e.g., here) – but it was still before he won his Nobel Prize (in 1922).

Anyway, the text down the right-hand side of the Guardian piece can be found here; it’s well worth reading!

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The 21 Group – Update

Posted in Harassment Bullying etc with tags , , , on November 2, 2023 by telescoper

You may have read last week (26th October) a guest post on this blog by Wyn Evans about the launch of the 21Group:

Following this post, the launch of this group has now been covered by the Times Higher

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/bullying-support-network-launched-due-universities-inaction

and Nature

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03418-3

I’ll update this post with further relevant links if and when I find them; you can also follow the campaign on the 21Group blog.

I very much hope this initiative succeeds in its aims, though it has powerful reactionary forces arrayed against it.

In other news, I’m told that the University of Manchester has blocked access to the 21group website by staff through centrally-managed devices. This may be inadvertent, but if it’s deliberate then it is both sinister and stupid.

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On My Radio (Telescope) …

Posted in Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , on April 7, 2011 by telescoper

A piece of news I should have passed on sooner than this is the announcement that the  Headquarters for the Square Kilometre Array will be based at the Jodrell Bank Observatory which, as you all know, is situated in the English Midlands.

The Square Kilometre Array (known to the astronomical community as SKA) will be, when it’s built, the largest radio telescope, and in fact the largest telescope of any kind, ever constructed.  Building it will be a huge technical challenge, and it involves teams from all around the world. Although it hasn’t yet been decided where the actual kit will be sited – Australia and South Africa are two strong contenders – it’s definitely a coup for the UK to be hosting the Project Office. So congratulations to Jodrell Bank and to John Womersley, Director of Science Programmes at the Science and Technology Facilities Council who will be heading up the operation.

I think  that the SKA is by far the most exciting project in ground-based astronomy on the STFC books: it has a significantly stronger science case than its competitor in the optical part of the spectrum, the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), although it is admittedly more of a challenge to build it from a technological point of view. Over the last few years I’ve feared on many occasions that STFC would have to pull out of one of these two very expensive projects and that E-ELT would be the one that survived because it is within the remit of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) to which we pay a hefty subscription. Fortunately the clouds seem to have lifted a bit and it looks like we’re going to remain in both, which is excellent news for UK astronomy.

I was thinking of putting up a bit of music to celebrate the good news. Hmmm….Ska….radio. No brainer really. I wonder who was The Selecter for the  location of the SKA Project Office?

P.S. I just looked at the date when On My Radio was in the charts. October 1979, when I was 16.  I have to confess that in those days I had a massive crush on lead singer Pauline Black …


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