May 2026
Dava Sobel delivers her Lyne Starling Trimble lecture on Marie Curie.
AIP.
Video now available: Dava Sobel, “At Mme. Curie’s lab”
Best-selling author Dava Sobel drew an appreciative crowd to AIP’s DC event space for her May 27 Lyne Starling Trimble lecture, “At Mme. Curie’s lab: Radiation and a place for women in science.” While Marie Skłodowska Curie was uncomfortable with her fame, her research institute became a magnet for women from around the world trying to find a place in physics and chemistry. The video of Sobel’s lecture is now available at our website.
Mark your calendar
SEP 23, 2026
Dabhoiwala will present our next Lyne Starling Trimble lecture, on a black 18th-century Jamaican polymath who strived to see his talents recognized and remembered.
This month from the Ex Libris Universum Library Blog
NBLA book picks spanning biographies of South Asian physicists, books on Asian American history, poetry, and more.
MAY 11, 2026
Shohini Ghose discusses the inspiration behind her recent book and the vital role of photos and oral histories to shaping our understanding of women scientists’ stories.
MAY 15, 2026
From teenage plane enthusiasts to physicists who changed aviation forever, physics history is full of scientists with their heads in the clouds.
MAY 20, 2026
A curated exhibit of materials relating to Oppenheimer’s life and legacy from the Niels Bohr Library & Archives.
Photographic exploration of South Asian scientists in the post-Independence era, focusing on India’s rise as a nuclear power and global scientific influence.
This month from the Weekly Edition
Fay Ajzenberg-Selove, Vera Kistiakowsky, and others led early American Physical Society efforts to better understand women’s underrepresentation.
Wellerstein discusses how he came to his new thesis that President Truman’s views on the atomic bomb were shaped by his initial ignorance about how it would be used.
An article from AIP’s next history postdoc shows how the astronomer’s life in Washington, DC shaped his views on the place of science in American politics.
A new article examines how a sprawling subfield of physics developed in Japan with no precise analogue in other countries.
Interviews with Alex Wolszczan and Dale Frail narrate how they discovered planets orbiting a pulsar and how it flew against the expectations of exoplanet research.
History from Physics Today
MAY 06, 2026
Ryan Dahn writes about how newly public interviews offer insight into Oppenheimer’s early education in quantum physics.
Allison Buser writes about how in 1954 APS and AIP weighed their resposnes to the upcoming Atomic Energy Commission decision in the Oppenheimer case.
Newly posted oral histories
- Emily Brodsky, interviewed January 7, 2026, by Anna Doel
- Dale Frail, interviewed March 2, 2026, by Rebecca Charbonneau
- David Malament, interviewed February 11 and 12, 2026, by Mahmoud Jalloh
- Jami Valentine Miller, interviewed December 10, 2025, by Anna Doel
- Alex Wolszczan, interviewed February 11, 2026, by Rebecca Charbonneau
New grant-in-aid recipients
Thanks to the availability of additional resources through our Robert H. G. Helleman Memorial Fund and funding from the Henry Luce Foundation for AIP’s “Faces of the Physical Sciences” initiative, we have been able to increase the number of awards we could offer during our last two grant-in-aid application cycles. This year, we also raised the maximum award amount to $3,000. The next application deadline is November 15. The recipients in our last two cycles were:
- Bárbara de Almeida Silvério (UFBA), research on Annie Cannon’s methodology
- Joanna Ashbourne (Oxford University), support for a conference on error in physics
- Sara Bassanelli (University of Pavia/POLITO), research on international standards
- Tathagat Bhatia (MIT), research on information and data practices in the Earth sciences
- Luca Campagnoni (University of Padua), archival work on Bruno Rossi
- Silvia Castillo Vergara (University of Toronto), research on quantum information science
- Michelle Frank, research on Chien-Shiung Wu
- Penelope Hardy (University of Wisconsin-La Crosse), research on RV Calypso
- Friso Hoeneveld, research on Teun Michels
- Jolene Johnson (University of Wisconsin-River Falls), interviews with women in Minnesota physics
- Edward Landa (University of Maryland), research on G. Evelyn Hutchinson and biogeochemistry
- Patrick McCray (UC Santa Barbara), interviews on exoplanet habitability
- Julia Menzel (University of Toronto), archival research at the Aspen Center for Physics
- Sharad Pandian (Princeton University), research on human calorimetry
- Andra Sonia Petrutiu (Cornell University), interviews on supercomputers in India
- Bruce Popp, research on the First Solvay Conference
- Nithyanand Rao (UC San Diego), research on E. C. George Sudarshan
- Trinidad Rico (Rutgers University), research on the Huemul laboratory in Patagonia
- Ohad Reiss-Sorokin (Institute for Advanced Study), research on Thomas Kuhn at Princeton
- Deborah Shapley, research on Harlow Shapley
- Shelly Yiran Shi (UC San Diego/Caltech), research on Chien-Shiung Wu
- Amogh Thakkar (New York University), documentary on dark matter and dark energy
- Xiaona Wang (University of Warwick), research on Chinese sources used in the “Newton Wars”
- Bethan Winter (German Historical Institute Warsaw), research on UK-Soviet fusion collaboration
