Author: Carlos Hidalgo

The meeting on "PHYSICS FOR SOCIETY: GRAND CHALLENGES IN THE HORIZON 2050" was held at the Magnus Haus in Berlin from 28 to 29 October 2021. It was jointly organized by the European Physical Society (EPS) and the German Physical Society (DPG) on the occasion of the DPG’s 175 year- Anniversary. The conference, with hybrid format, attracted nearly 300 people (on-line participation) as well as nearly 30 invited speakers (on-site) from different international institutions. The DPG hosts provided an excellent and unique atmosphere for the meeting (https://www.forumphysicsandsociety.org/).

The scientific committee, chaired by Carlos Hidalgo and session coordinators from different EU institutions (Ralph Assmann, Felicia Barbato, Christian Beck, Kees van der Beek, Giulio Cerullo, Luisa Cifarelli, Felix Ritort, Mairi Sakellariadou, Bart van Tiggelen, Claudia-Elisabeth Wulz), played a key role in the development of the programme. This addressed two major pillars: a) Physics as global human enterprise for understanding nature and b) Physics developments to tackle major issues affecting the lives of citizens.

The meeting offered plenary lectures covering a wide range of topics: Physics bridging the infinities, the smallest scales and the largest scales; Matter and waves; Physics for understanding life: searching for life in the universe and intelligence and life; Physics for health, accelerators and bionics & robotics; Physics for environment and sustainable development: earth, climate and energy; Physics for secure and efficient societies: large scale complex socio-technical systems information and communication. All these topics are widely recognised today as the most important global challenges in physics. The meeting also offered two round table discussions, chaired by Christophe Rossel, Luc van Dyck and Rüdiger Voss, addressing issues such as: Curiosity-driven research as a road to new paradigms and true innovation; Technology development: power gains and vulnerability; Education and research in an interdisciplinary environment; Open communication and responsible citizens; Science and ethics.

The objective of the meeting was to assemble contributions with depth and high quality from the entire physics community. Interdisciplinarity allows interconnections between many areas of knowledge (involving physics, mathematics, biology, chemistry) in such a way that the whole body of connected ideas might suddenly expand due to small advances within the islands of specialized knowledge. In this meeting, we have looked at all these aspects to explore what makes us, human beings, really unique in nature: our ability to imagine and shape the future by making use of the scientific method.

The meeting provided a glimpse of the on-going “Grand Challenges in the Horizon 2050” EPS project addressing world’s physics agenda to solve in science and technology. The resulting book to be published by IOPP, under the umbrella of the EPS, is designed to address the social dimension of science and the grand challenges in Physics that will bring radical changes to developed societies, to raise standards of living at the global scale and to provide basic understanding of nature on the Horizon 2050. This action is under development within the framework of the EPS Forum Physics and Society activities in the period 2019 – 2022.

The recorded meeting will also be available. Check the EPS website and social media.