In 1969, one of the more memorable incidents in the public advocacy of science took place. The American physicist Robert Wilson was asked to testify before Congress in support of the construction of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, known as Fermilab. For Wilson, building this huge machine had been a labor of love and nobody had a better background for it. He had worked on the Manhattan Project where he was the youngest group leader in the experimental division, and after the war he had become a professor at Cornell University.

An inspiration from the birth of aviation

A few weeks ago I visited the small coastal town of Kitty Hawk in North Carolina. Kitty Hawk is where the Wright brothers made their epoch-making first powered flight. Big stones mark the start and end points of the flight. There is a huge monument on top of a hill where they took off and then there are three stones at varying distances at ground level. The three stones indicate the distances covered on every flight; the brothers clearly got better at flying on every attempt.
The Wright brothers' story is inspiring not only because of the watershed in human history which they orchestrated but also because it shows the evolution of a technology at its best. The projects which the brothers undertook cost a few hundred dollars and should serve as a beacon of inspiration in this era of "big science" involving hundreds of millions of dollars. The brothers had a bicycle workshop in which they fashioned many of the components of their infant gliders. They drew inspiration from Otto Lillienthal who had been the first aviation pioneer to make successful glided flights; tragically, Lillienthal was killed on one of his flights, but not before saying "Kleine Opfer müssen gebracht werden!" ("Small sacrifices must be made!"). One of the most important lessons that the Wrights learn from Lillienthal's adventures was the great value of building 'toy' models. Toy models start from the simplest possible systems which retain the essential features of a phenomenon and then work their way towards greater complexity. This philosophy has been used by many other pioneers of technology, including the scientists and engineers who made the moon landings possible.  (More)

The Lindau Meeting 2010 is a gathering of scientists from all kinds of backgrounds. While we eat our lunches or wait for the next set of talks to start, physicists are talking to biologists, chemists are conversing with physiologists, medics are talking to materials scientists, all conveying the passions they have for their subject.  But explaining the background, the problems, and the consequences of your work to new audiences can often be difficult.  Trying to get non-scientists to engage with your work can be an even bigger challenge.

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This is a translation of Bastian Greshakes article "Evolution - auf ein Ziel hin?" in the German blog posts

 Werner Arber is at the Lindau meeting for the tenth time this year and again he has been giving a lecture. His topic for this year's meeting was “Genetic and Cultural Impacts on the Course of Biological Evolution” and he mingled notorious information with little new one. (More)

The impact of chemistry and physics to biomedicine apparently has its future in neuroscience according to Erwin Neher. The entire panel discussed various topics (you can read about some of the highlights here), but for me Neher dominated the conversation with his visions of the brain. (More)

This morning at the Lindau Nobel meeting we had a panel discussion about the Impact of Chemistry and Physics to Biomedicine. Where is the Future? I've summarized some of the highlights below, using the Twitter comments of this session (following the conference Twitter feed at #lnlm10 is highly recommended). The young researchers were asked to submit questions to the panel, and they were used as starting points for the panel discussion (the Lindau version of an unconference session). (More)

John Turton Randall was trying hard, real hard. For some time now, the University of Birmingham physicist was focusing on trying to improve the features of a machine which transmitted and received electromagnetic waves. A few years back this would have been just another intriguing academic problem for a physicist to crack, but this time it was a matter of life and death for thousands. Literally. It was 1939, and an ominous menace loomed large over Europe in the person of Adolf Hitler. The machine Randall was working on was designed to thwart Hitler's attempts to invade the British mainland. It sent out electromagnetic waves of meter wavelength and tried to deduce the position of an object based on its reflection of these waves. The operating principle of this humble machine later turned into a household name- Radar. (More)

I am one of the lucky people who may attend the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting several times. This will be my third time. But there’s a big BUT: The more often I have been, the more sad I am about all the other meetings I have missed. This year, the Lindau meetings celebrate their 60th anniversary and the list of Laureates and lectures is the largest in the history of the meeting. One of the most outstanding persons I have never had chance to listen or even talk to at Lindau is the Grand Dame of Sciences Rita Levi-Montalcini (101). (More)