As a mineral scientist, Professor Simon Redfern from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences travels widely, and likes his visits to be about more than just the rocks. A recent trip to Kazakhstan was enlivened by reading Jamila by Chinghiz Aitmatov, a novella set in post-war Soviet Kyrgyzstan, on the borders of Kazakhstan.

Here he talks about this favourite book as part of ‘Novel Thoughts’, a series exploring the literary reading habits of eight Cambridge scientists. From illustrated children’s books to Thomas Hardy, from Star Wars to Middlemarch, we find out what fiction has meant to each of the scientists and peek inside the covers of the books that have played a major role in their lives.

‘Novel Thoughts’ was inspired by research at St Andrew’s University by Dr Sarah Dillon (now a lecturer in the Faculty of English at Cambridge) who interviewed 20 scientists for the ‘What Scientists Read’ project. She found that reading fiction can help scientists to see the bigger picture and be reminded of the complex richness of human experience. Novels can show the real stories behind the science, or trigger a desire in a young reader to change lives through scientific discovery. They can open up new worlds, or encourage a different approach to familiar tasks.

Karen Yu’s growing love of science as a young girl was galvanised by reading the novelisation of the Star Wars movies (Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker by George Lucas). Her desire to build her own fusion reactor eventually morphed into a PhD in industrial photonics, using lasers for nanoscale manufacturing (if not for lightsabers), at Cambridge’s Department of Engineering.

Here she talks about this favourite book as part of ‘Novel Thoughts’, a series exploring the literary reading habits of eight Cambridge scientists. From illustrated children’s books to Thomas Hardy, from Star Wars to Middlemarch, we find out what fiction has meant to each of the scientists and peek inside the covers of the books that have played a major role in their lives.

‘Novel Thoughts’ was inspired by research at St Andrew’s University by Dr Sarah Dillon (now a lecturer in the Faculty of English at Cambridge) who interviewed 20 scientists for the ‘What Scientists Read’ project. She found that reading fiction can help scientists to see the bigger picture and be reminded of the complex richness of human experience. Novels can show the real stories behind the science, or trigger a desire in a young reader to change lives through scientific discovery. They can open up new worlds, or encourage a different approach to familiar tasks.

Professor Clare Bryant from Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine explains how reading AS Byatt’s Possession at a crucial point in her early career reminded her of the excitement of research and persuaded her not to turn her back on her life as a scientist.

Here she talks about this favourite book as part of ‘Novel Thoughts’, a series exploring the literary reading habits of eight Cambridge scientists. From illustrated children’s books to Thomas Hardy, from Star Wars to Middlemarch, we find out what fiction has meant to each of the scientists and peek inside the covers of the books that have played a major role in their lives.

‘Novel Thoughts’ was inspired by research at St Andrew’s University by Dr Sarah Dillon (now a lecturer in the Faculty of English at Cambridge) who interviewed 20 scientists for the ‘What Scientists Read’ project. She found that reading fiction can help scientists to see the bigger picture and be reminded of the complex richness of human experience. Novels can show the real stories behind the science, or trigger a desire in a young reader to change lives through scientific discovery. They can open up new worlds, or encourage a different approach to familiar tasks.

As a child, Dr Paul Coxon from Cambridge’s Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, was fascinated by the madcap inventions of the boy hero in Jan Wahl’s SOS Bobmobile (illustrated by Fernando Krahn) – and he still likes to tinker with his own inventions in the lab today.

Here he talks about this favourite book as part of ‘Novel Thoughts’, a series exploring the literary reading habits of eight Cambridge scientists. From illustrated children’s books to Thomas Hardy, from Star Wars to Middlemarch, we find out what fiction has meant to each of the scientists and peek inside the covers of the books that have played a major role in their lives.

‘Novel Thoughts’ was inspired by research at St Andrew’s University by Dr Sarah Dillon (now a lecturer in the Faculty of English at Cambridge) who interviewed 20 scientists for the ‘What Scientists Read’ project. She found that reading fiction can help scientists to see the bigger picture and be reminded of the complex richness of human experience. Novels can show the real stories behind the science, or trigger a desire in a young reader to change lives through scientific discovery. They can open up new worlds, or encourage a different approach to familiar tasks.

View the whole series: Novel Thoughts: What scientists read

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoEBu2Q8ia_OJey8wqE7pyczqsQ8BFrx3

Read about Novel Thoughts

http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/novel-thoughts-what-cambridge-scientists-read

It was thought that no bronzes by Michelangelo had survived - now experts believe they have found not one, but two - with a tiny detail in a 500-year-old drawing providing vital evidence.

They are naked, beautiful, muscular and ride triumphantly on two ferocious panthers. And now the secret of who created these magnificent metre-high bronze male nudes could well be solved. A team of international experts led by the University of Cambridge and Fitzwilliam Museum has gathered compelling evidence that argues that these masterpieces, which have spent over a century in relative obscurity, are early works by Michelangelo, made just after he completed the marble David and as he was about to embark on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

If the attribution is correct, they are the only surviving Michelangelo bronzes in the world.

On a July day in 1930, British Airship R100 took to the air from a Bedfordshire airfield on its first transatlantic flight. As it made its way across the Atlantic Ocean, 2,000ft in the air, a window opened and Squadron Leader Booth, wearing a pair of rubber gloves, leaned out. In his hand was a Petri dish.

This film tells the story of a remarkable experiment, the brain child of Cambridge mycologist Dr W. A. R. Dillon Weston, and his passion for crafting models of fungi spun out of glass.

Dr Ruth A. Horry from the University of Cambridge’s Department of History and Philosophy of Science tells the story she has been researching, and shows us some of the 90 glass models now housed in the Whipple Museum of the History of Science in Cambridge.

http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/whipple/

http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/the-flying-scientist-who-chased-spores

http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/whale-tale-a-dutch-seascape-and-its-lost-leviathan

Earlier this year a conservator at the Hamilton Kerr Institute made a surprising discovery while working on a painting owned by the Fitzwilliam Museum. As Shan Kuang removed the old varnish from the surface, she revealed the whale that had been the intended focus of the scene.

In 1873 the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, was given a number of Dutch landscape paintings by a benefactor called Richard Kerrick. Among these works of art was a beach scene painted by the artist Hendrick van Anthonissen early in the 17th century. Anthonissen depicts groups of people clustered on a sandy beach at the small town of Scheveningen. Other figures stand on the cliffs and, on the shore, several boats have been pulled up on the sand.

http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/whale-tale-a-dutch-seascape-and-its-lost-leviathan

Seventy years after Allied soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy, Cambridge University's Churchill Archives Centre has released a short film (free to embed) commemorating the 'forgotten architect' of D-Day.

Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay was part of General Eisenhower's inner circle during the months and years of top secret planning that led to Operation Overlord, launched on June 6, 1944.

Ramsay was in overall command of Operation Neptune, the unimaginably complex naval and landing operations of D-Day, as more than 4,000 ships and landing craft, nearly 200,000 men and thousands of aircraft took part in the first wave of Normandy landings.

However, Ramsay has become one of D-Day's forgotten men; a fatal plane crash in 1945 robbing him of the chance of penning his memoirs or taking his place alongside other venerated Allied leaders such as Eisenhower and Churchill at the end of hostilities.

Today, the Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge, is home to the personal archive of Admiral Ramsay, as well as those of Churchill and other distinguished military and political figures. The Ramsay archive includes his D-Day diary, invasion maps, photographs and correspondence -- as well as eyewitness accounts from the Dunkirk evacuation, another watershed occasion in British naval history overseen by Ramsay.

An anti-fraud laser detector could be used to identify counterfeit banknotes, pharmaceuticals and luxury goods.

The prototype was developed with support from the Cambridge Innovation and Knowledge Centre

http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/anti-fraud-lasers-and-inks-for-transparent-electronics

Ground-breaking new sensing technologies in the world's first 'smart tunnel' are providing engineers with an inexpensive and efficient method of monitoring, maintaining and protecting the UK's infrastructure, now and well into the future.

http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/the-making-of-a-smart-tunnel