After a conception and reconstruction phase of several years, the Victor Franz Hess observatory on the Hafelekar mountain above Innsbruck was officially presented to the public on 29th September 2022. On this occasion, the European Physical Society awarded the station the distinction of "EPS Historic Site".

The research site was renovated by the University of Innsbruck with the support of the City of Innsbruck and the “Nordkettenbahnen”, the railway and cable cars which make the hut easily accessible, and transformed into a new attraction high above the roofs of the city, at more than 2,300 metres above sea level. The new concept offers visitors the opportunity to get to know the person Victor Franz Hess and his research as well as the phenomenon of cosmic radiation through multimedia presentations. During the opening ceremony, the EPS, represented by Past President Rüdiger Voss, awarded the site the distinction of an EPS Historic Site, the third of its kind in Austria and the first outside Vienna. "Victor Franz Hess did amazing things for science and the University of Innsbruck is very proud of its former professor. Today, members of our physics institutes are continuing this successful tradition with their groundbreaking research on quantum physics, ion physics and astroparticle physics. The newly designed observatory on the Hafelekar gives all visitors an insight into the pioneering work of Victor Franz Hess and the fascinating world of physics. We invite all those interested to take advantage of this opportunity and combine the joy of nature with learning about the history of the natural sciences," said Tilmann Märk, Rector of the University of Innsbruck and himself a distinguished physicist.

Rüdiger Voss, former President of the European Physical Society (right), unveils the EPS Historic Site Victor Franz Hess observatory at Hafelekar
together with Rector Tilmann Märk (middle) and Mayor Georg Willi (left) - image: EPS/Gina Gunaratnam

Experience research

With the redesign of this unique research site, the exterior of the hut was restored to its historical condition. To this end, the roof was renewed and the entire building was covered with wooden shingles. But it was also a matter of making the research work and the person Victor Franz Hess easy and understandable for all visitors to the Hafelekar and making it possible to experience it from the outside all year round. In a video installation, visitors can now get to know the researcher Hess as well as immerse themselves in the world of cosmic rays. Inside the hut, a showroom has been set up for expert visitors, in which the stages of Victor Franz Hess's life as a researcher are documented.

Rays from outer space

As early as 1912, Victor Franz Hess discovered cosmic rays during daring balloon flights. For a long time, he was searching for a place at high altitude that was suitable for the continuous measurement of the high-energy rays. He found what he was looking for in the construction hut of the Nordkettenbahn on the Hafelekar. In the 1930s, there was a great deal of activity there. After Hess received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1936, the most renowned scientists of the time visited the observatory. This place also helped other researchers to make groundbreaking discoveries. On photographic plates exposed here, Marietta Blau and Hertha Wambacher observed for the first time in 1937 how a particle of the cosmic rays shattered an atomic nucleus. In the 1960s and 1970s, a neutron monitor and muon detectors were installed. This enabled the researchers to measure two types of particles contained in the cosmic rays individually and to gain important insights.

Now, the Victor Franz Hess observatory on the Hafelekar is not only a historical site, but still a place of research. Unlike in the past, however, the results of the corresponding detectors are no longer analysed on site: Today, the measurement data is sent directly and digitally to the different research groups.

The Victor Franz Hess observatory was awarded the EPS Historic Site designation on 29th October 2022 - image: Eva Fessler

Original press release in German: https://www.uibk.ac.at/de/newsroom/2022/sanierte-victor-franz-hess-messstation-eroffnet/
translated with DeepL and validated by the University of Innsbruck.

Author: Kees van der Beek

Kees van der Beek, chair of the EPS Equal Opportunities Committee, spoke to María Pilar López Sancho (Madrid Institute for Materials Science – ICMM and Spanish Higher Council for Scientific Research - CSIC), winner of the Winter 2021 EPS Emmy Noether Distinction on her career, the effectiveness of advocacy of gender equality, cultural bias, and the future of action for equality.

Kees van der Beek (KvdB): My very warmest congratulations with the Winter 2021 Emmy Noether Distinction, awarded for your many contributions to solid state physics and to strengthening the position of women in physics! Could you tell us how you came to choose physics as a career path? Spanish society at the time was very different from now. What was it like for women to engage in a scientific career in the late nineteen-sixties, early nineteen-seventies?  Were there many women in physics or other sciences back then? 

María Pilar López Sancho(PLS):  At the time, most schools in Spain were of religious character, and both primary and secondary schools were separated by gender. Therefore, all my classmates were girls. At age 14, we had to make the decision of continuing our studies or not, and, if we did, whether we preferred humanities or the sciences. In my class, of those who choose the sciences, we were five girls to choose physics. As for me, this was because I wished to look beyond pure mathematics and study other areas of the natural sciences. It is a bit paradoxical that, as a result of the system of the day, and while we as women were certainly a minority in the scientific field, we were not few, or a small minority by any means. In chemistry in particular, there were many women. As for me, the first time I noticed that as women, we were a minority, was during my university studies and laboratory work at the university. Those years also corresponded to the final convulsions of Franco’s regime. University life was punctuated by intense political activity, and by external policing of university affairs. Nevertheless, I look back on those years dearly, because they were filled with comradeship, intensive learning, and the acquiring of very many formative experiences. 

After university, many of us, including myself, wanted to pursue theoretical physics, a field in which there were very few professional opportunities and very few professorial chairs in the late nineteen-seventies and the early nineteen-eighties. I therefore came to experimental physics, where I was immediately drawn to surface physics and the interaction of gases and molecules with metallic surfaces. You have to understand that the development of new experimental techniques such as Angle-Resolved Photo-Emission Spectroscopy (ARPES) at the time was absolutely spectacular. However, Spanish science was still badly funded in the day, so that many experimentalists such as myself moved to modelling of the latest spectacular results, and, from there, to theoretical condensed matter physics. I am nevertheless surrounded by laboratories and have thus maintained proximity with experimentalists at ICMM, but I think those links between theoreticians and experimentalists might have been, and should be stronger.

KvdB: How did you move into the field of low-dimensional materials? Was that a natural evolution given your environment?

PLS:  I had been working on the physical and the electronic properties of metals and had developed quite a few techniques that I could quite quickly apply to the cuprate high temperature superconductors discovered in 1986, and from there, to other highly correlated electronic systems as well as to carbon nanotubes. In parallel, several colleagues of mine had already worked on the hypothesis of Dirac-like electron physics such as surmised for two-dimensional carbon, or graphene, even before this was isolated. When it was, it was simply naturally to shift our attention to that system.

KvdB:Among the many areas of condensed matter topics that you have studied, which appealed the most to you as a particular challenge that you wanted to take up?  Are there areas that you would have liked to study but didn’t?

PLS: I think that twistronics and the currently much studied twisted bilayers and multilayers built of two-dimensional materials are extremely interesting and very challenging, not in the least through the necessity of taking very large numbers of atoms into account into any computational effort made on these systems. Besides that, I am most interested in the topological properties of electronic systems, and the relation between topology and disorder, which to me was really quite unexpected.

KvdB: Apart from a very successful career in physics, you have built a very rich “second career” in furthering gender equality and the cause of women physicists. How did you start? Was there a particular “flashpoint” that made you realise that you should do this?

PLS: For most of my career, I took no notice of gender issues and the position of women in physics. However, in 1999, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published a report assessing gender segregation within their scientific faculty. When I read the results, I was astonished! How could gender bias and gender inequality thrive, or even exist, in such a prestigious institution? The MIT study was quickly followed by assessments of gender bias in scientific institutions in Europe and published by the European Commission. It was then that I, and other colleagues, realised that, at ICMM and in Spain, we were in a similar position, that there was indeed inequality in career progress, with not a single woman in the higher ranks of our institutions. I started to undertake action when I learned, in 1999, that the American Physical Society had acted upon the matter by founding their Committee on the Status of Women in Physics (CSWP), and demanded that the Royal Spanish Physical Society RSEF create a similar section – this happened in 2001. To build the case, we had gathered figures on the role and representation of women physicists in Spain that I presented to the RSEF. It was because of this that I got noticed, and that I was invited, along with three other RSEF colleagues, to attend the 2002 IUPAP First International Conference on Women in Physics in Paris. What an eye-opener that was! It was there that I met our colleagues who lead the first actions at MIT as well as many others, from countries all over the world, and that we decided, together, that physics should be done differently, and that we should do all we could to attract young women to a physics career. Once involved, I could not go back. I realized the importance of the issue, and before long had many responsibilities. These involved a lot of work, for I was not an expert in gender issues, nor were my collaborators, and we had little help. So indeed, our work amounted to almost a second research career!

KvdB: How did you balance your activity with your research? Could you achieve balance, or did you have to sacrifice some activities? Did you have reservations or second thoughts at some time?

PLS: I am a theoretical physicist, and do not head a permanent group. Therefore, my scientific production depends directly on the number of hours I personally put in. The thing is that, once I got involved in the Women and Science Commission (Comisión Mujeres y Ciencia) of CSIC and in the Association of Women Scientist and Technologists (AMIT), I was solicited for a much wider range of issues that I initially foresaw, urgent issues that demanded action. For example, there were many young women that encountered great difficulties reconciling maternity – there was, initially, no satisfactory regulation as to maternity leave – and their scientific career. If nothing were done, their career would collapse. Even if it was not my original role, these women had nowhere else to turn. It is my belief that we did a great deal for science by helping create conditions that allowed those women to continue. In doing so, I have met an incredible amount of very diverse and very interesting people from all scientific and social backgrounds, convinced of the importance of equality for science and society. This experience was extremely satisfactory to me and has more than made up for any scientific papers not published in the process.

KvdB:   As delegate president for the Women and Science Commission, how do you assess the impact that such a commission has, or can have? Indeed, once the commission makes proposals, the real work is only beginning.

PLS: The creation of the Women and Science Commission was very important because it was the first Spanish public office officially publishing figures on women in physics and women in science, and thus, to make the “diagnosis”. I would like to highlight the fundamental role of the then president of CSIC, Rolf Tarrach, a physicist who approved the formation of the Commission. His support demonstrated the importance of the attitude of men and authorities to equality.  Once the numbers were established, it became impossible to deny the reality of gender bias. From there on, we started to recommend gender-neutral language use in science. To my surprise, this encountered quite a lot of resistance, only recently have objections faded and have we come to a more equilibrated use of our language in a scientific environment. Since 2007, we have, in Spain, a law on gender equality, as well as established protocols on how to handle sexual or gender-based harassment. Thanks to initiatives such as of the Women and Science Commission that brought problems to the forefront, things are better now. Still, it has been and it remains very difficult to progress on gender issues, since bias is so strongly engrained. It is important to recognize the work done in this regard by the Women and Science Unit of the European Commission.

KvdB:  Isn’t furthering gender equality an issue of constant vigilance?

PLS: I would agree. With astonishment, I sometimes see that even when young colleagues organise a conference, they invite only male speakers, claiming that they cannot find any women! Fortunately, young women today are different. They are more vocal, they are more aware that we have laws now, laws that regulate and protect gender equality. They do not hesitate to appeal to these.

KvdB:  Having worked in the United Kingdom as well as in Spain, and having sat on the Helsinki Group on Women in Science, you have quite an important European experience. How would you situate Spain with respect to other European countries, with respect to the gender equality issue in science? From afar, Spain looks a leader, with nearly 50 % of women scientists and engineers. Does this mask remaining inequalities? In other European countries even the numbers are very low…

PLS: Indeed there is a difference between Mediterranean Europe and Northern Europe. For example, I remember that during my time at Imperial College in the late nineteen-seventies there were significantly less women physicists than in Spain.  A striking example is Turkey, where a large percentage of scientists – and physicists – are women. Many reasons have been advanced for this. One opposes the protestant- to catholic and other cultures, and the different social status of scientists in each. In protestant cultures, teachers’ and professors’ status would have been relatively higher with respect to the cleric, whereas in the latter women were perhaps more easily admitted to academic roles. Another factor, specific to Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Turkey, would the liberating effect after the fall of national dictatorships in the nineteen-seventies. The liberation of society empowered women and stimulated many to pursue the career they wanted, including academia. Still, even before that time, i.e. in the nineteen-sixties, many teachers in Spain were women.

A big problem is the propagation of role models. Even if a large proportion of primary school teachers in Spain are women, they tend to be more demanding towards boys than towards girls, according to education experts.

KvdB:  You have had a wonderful career in science as well as in furthering the cause of women scientists. If you would be solicited for a further role in either, would you accept? What would you still like to do?

PLS: At this time, I have resigned from both the Women and Science Commission of the CSIC and from the Group of Women Physicists (the Grupo Especializado de Mujeres en Física) of RSEF. I believe times have changed, and that there is a need for new people to step forward, people with new perspectives and new perceptions of society. We have been very successful in raising awareness and in changing the climate in our research organisations. What has to change now is the realisation that science, and engineering, is done not only for the benefit of men, but for that of the whole of society including women. Beyond adapting our institutions, the very object of a lot of research should take into account the reality of diversity. A good first step is the implementation of the diversity issue in projects, such as nowadays requested by the European Union. To progress though, experts are needed. Even if I truly want to help on all issues, I do not hold this expertise, and I think younger people should take the lead.

KvdB:  What recommendations or advice would you give young women in science?

PLS: Young women should be aware that differences do exist. They should also be aware that micro-bias exists, and that it can have a large effect on scientific practice and on society if it is not tackled in time. For example, it appears that the outcome of scientific evaluation depends on whether a male or a female CV is under consideration. Such bias is surely unconscious and unintentional, but, nevertheless, very real. To improve we need objectivity and transparency and everyone’s effort.

FLTR: Jesús Ricote, Pilar Aranda, Luis Viña, Pascuala García-Martínez, María Pilar López Sancho,
Kees van der Beek and José Ángel Martín Gago - image credit : Ángela R. Bonachera, ICMM.

On 7th October 2022, personalities including representatives of the governing bodies and partners of the Institut d'études scientifiques de Cargèse (IESC, CNRS/Univ. Côte d'Azur/Univ. de Corse Pasquale Paoli), gathered for the ceremony to receive the "historic site" distinction from the European Physical Society (EPS). The IESC thus becomes the 6th site to receive this award in France, two years after the Ecole de physique des Houches. On this occasion, a commemorative plaque was unveiled by Luc Bergé, President of the EPS and Guy Wormser, President of the French Physical Society (SFP). "The Institut d'études scientifiques de Cargèse has participated in the history of physics through the great names who have stayed there, but the history continues to be made. The younger generations who are here to learn will later set up projects and remember that they came through Cargèse," said Luc Bergé.

The Institut d'études scientifiques de Cargèse (IESC) received this award for its strong historical involvement in the dissemination of modern knowledge and concepts in physics.
The IESC was born in 1960 from an idea of Maurice Levy, professor at the Faculty of Sciences in Paris and director of the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics at the ENS. 60 years later, more than 700 schools have been organised and about 2000 international students are welcomed every year.

Created to host physics conferences, the IESC has opened up to other disciplines over time, making interdisciplinarity one of its trademarks. The concept behind this school remains the same as that of its "big sister" Les Houches: to offer quality training on contemporary advances, by renowned scientists, in an idyllic setting conducive to reflection and meetings.

The site where the IESC is located in Corsica, France - image credit: IESC

EPS President Luc Bergé unveiling the plaque with SFP President Guy Wormser - image credit: IESC

The plaque in front of the IESC building - image credit: IESC

Since the beginning of November, the European Physical Society has had two secretaries general for the first time in its history.  David Lee who will retire as Secretary General in March 2023 and Anne Pawsey who has just arrived in Mulhouse and will continue to run the society after this hand-over period.

Anne Pawsey joins the society from the University of Göttingen, where she coordinated the teaching and e-learning of the Max Planck School Matter to Life. Dr Pawsey is a soft matter physicist who received her PhD from the University of Edinburg in 2014. Since then, she has worked at the interface between physics and industry as a researcher and in research management, coordinated the Scottish Universities Physical Alliance Graduate School and she spent the pandemic ensuring that the Matter to Life Network and the Göttingen Physics Faculty could continue to teach online and in a hybrid format with handwritten equations, and demonstration experiments viewable by all participants.

Dr Pawsey has been involved in physics societies since her undergraduate days, when she was the secretary of IAPS and one of the organisers of ICPS. A science communicator, she enjoys revealing the often surprisingly complex physics underlying everyday phenomena, and engaging adults who feel that physics is “not for them” by creating interactive shows designed for pubs, bars or music festivals.  After a fellowship at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology she has some experience in communicating with policy makers.

David would like to welcome Anne to EPS, she is looking forward to working with the EPS community.

Anne Pawsey in front of the EPS headquarters in Mulhouse

The start of a Master thesis or PhD thesis project represents a caesura in the academic education of many students in engineering and physics. Frequently, the focus is no longer solely on acquiring theoretical knowledge and understanding physical concepts, but rather on conceptualizing, realizing, and operating an experimental setup suited to investigate the research topic at hand. This change comes with the need for a new set of skills.

This need in mind, the “Technology and Innovation Group (TIG)” of EPS and the IdeaSquare innovation space at CERN hosted the “2nd EPS TIG Hands-on Event for Science, Technology and Interface” from September 30 to October 2 at CERN, Geneva. On day 1 the 19 participating students from across Europe received introductory lectures into rapid prototyping and IP-related questions from Markus Nordberg and visited the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), the particle detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). On day 2 they were introduced into different technologies - NV center-based quantum sensing and nm-precise position sensing– by Prof. Jan Meijer (University Leipzig) and Olivier Acher (HORIBA), respectively, who joined remotely. Afterwards the students were assigned into groups, each being in charge of realizing one subcomponent of a tutorial experiment on said topics. Since eventually all pieces had to be integrated into a complete experiment they did not only have to work on the technical tasks, e.g., assembling the electromechanical and optical setup or establishing the data acquisition, but also had to coordinate their work with the other teams, pointing out the importance of communication and interpersonal skills in technology and scientific environments. Eventually the results were shared in a final presentation, such that all participants left Geneva with many valuable insights into the skills required to set up an experiment and the challenges that come with experimental work.

The TIG would like to thank EPS and the CERN IdeaSquare for the generous support of the event, Prof. Meijer Olivier Acher for their involvement, and Markus Nordberg and Stefan Kubsky for organizing and leading the workshop.

Presentation of measured deca-nanometer drift induced by thermal gradients in the compact superresolution sensor hands-on experiment
Image credit: Stefan Kubsky

Some twenty participants from across Europe seem to have liked the event
Image credit: Stefan Kubsky