CAVMAG

CONTENTS

This year the Cavendish Laboratory is celebrating its 150th anniversary. To mark this extraordinary milestone, we’re pleased to present a special edition of CavMag that looks back on a century and a half of scientific innovation that has transformed our understanding of nature and the way we live. In these pages you’ll find articles from our staff charting the histories of some of the lab’s research areas, from soft matter and the theory of condensed matter to radio astronomy and high energy physics. While it’s impossible to cover all the Cavendish’s astonishing achievements in a few short pages, we hope this issue will give you a hint of the breadth and depth of our work, which continues to lead the world, as it has since the days of James Clerk Maxwell.

For the cover, we’ve commissioned a special illustration by Stewart Harris that attempts to squeeze 150 years of science into a single image. You may be able to spot a few familiar faces, from famous figures of the past to a smattering of our current staff, chosen in an attempt to cover a range of different research areas. Of course, we couldn’t come close to including all the Cavendish’s important figures and we apologise in advance for any egregious omissions! If you think you can name all the faces on the cover, please write to us at cavmag@phy.cam.ac.uk for the chance to win a much sought-after Cavendish Laboratory mug and a printed poster of the cover artwork. The identity of each face will be revealed in the next issue.

Harry Cliff