Author Archives: Stephen

In the garden

Posted on December 27, 2021 by Stephen

What is it about living through a pandemic that has quelled the motivation to write? I suspect it may have something to do with the unstructuring of time, or rather its reduction through confinement to rhythms dulled by repetition. Whatever … Continue reading →

Posted in Science | Comments Off on In the garden

For my mother

Posted on November 30, 2021 by Stephen

Black masked, weighed down by grey grief, We carried you into the church To be wrung out of our sodden farewells. But you had already gone. It was a slow journey to that sombre altar. In the last years the … Continue reading →

Posted in Scientific Life | 3 Comments

A Reckoning with Huxley’s Legacy

Posted on November 23, 2021 by Stephen

Recognition and Redistribution for Imperial College’s Community This is a guest post by my former colleague, Dr Rahma (Red) Elmahdi, in which she lays our her reaction to the Imperial College History Report, and in particular the recommendation to rename the Huxley … Continue reading →

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The Huxley Question

Posted on November 19, 2021 by Stephen

Writing in The Observer a couple of weeks ago, Kenan Malik cast a sceptical eye over a report published by the history group at Imperial College that had been asked to reflect on “the current understanding and reception of the … Continue reading →

Posted in History of Science | 3 Comments

To be or not to be exceptional?

Posted on May 23, 2021 by Stephen

I can’t remember how I came across this video from philosopher Alain de Botton, but I feel seen. Like many academics, I guess, I have always prized scholarly achievement. And of course, within our systems of research assessment, we are … Continue reading →

Posted in Scientific Life | Comments Off on To be or not to be exceptional?

Books of 2020

Posted on December 29, 2020 by Stephen

I made what I think was a smart move at the beginning of 2020. Instead of waiting until the year’s end and then struggling to recall what I thought of the books I had read, I created a Twitter thread of … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Review | 4 Comments

Photographs of 2020

Posted on December 27, 2020 by Stephen

My computer tells me that I took over 2,400 photographs in 2020. Here are my favourites. I’m afraid I have failed to whittle them down to fewer than seventy-five. Click on the first image, taken on a winter walk on … Continue reading →

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No, DeepMind has not solved protein folding

Posted on December 2, 2020 by Stephen

(Please note that this post was updated on 12th Dec 2020 – see below) This week DeepMind has announced that, using artificial intelligence (AI), it has solved the 50-year old problem of ‘protein folding’. The announcement was made as the … Continue reading →

Posted in Protein Crystallography, Science | 23 Comments

Nature’s new open access option – a few first thoughts

Posted on November 24, 2020 by Stephen

A news article published online in Nature this morning discusses the announcement of new open access options in the Nature family of journals. The details are in the article, but the basic story (written by Holly Else) is that authors … Continue reading →

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Teaching online: how to use an iPad as a whiteboard

Posted on November 22, 2020 by Stephen

Last week I gave my first online tutorials in which I needed to scribble on a whiteboard and show the students their exam scripts from last term, which had been posted to my home. To solve both of these problems, … Continue reading →

Posted in Science | 5 Comments

In defence of the bureaucracy of equality, diversity and inclusion

Posted on September 28, 2020 by Stephen

The UK government’s new policy to reduce bureaucracy in research institutions aims at an easy target. But the bonfire of administration lit by the Prime Minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, risks burning down the foundations of much-needed efforts to value … Continue reading →

Posted in Equality Diversity & Inclusion, Science & Politics, Scientific Life | Comments Off on In defence of the bureaucracy of equality, diversity and inclusion

Our Beirut Brexit

Posted on September 13, 2020 by Stephen

At 6:18 on the afternoon of Tuesday 4th August a huge store of ammonium nitrate exploded at the port of Beirut. The blast, one of the most powerful non-nuclear explosions in history, killed nearly 200 people, injured thousands more, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Communication, International, Science & Politics | 3 Comments