This means that I don’t have much time to write this blog, in particular to update my list of books read in the preceding ...

The future seemed bright. The postdoc in London started out well, but somewhere along the way it all began to unravel. The ...

This means that I don’t have much time to write this blog, in particular to update my list of books read in the preceding month, which is becoming every two months. So here is what I read (or, mostly, ...

Does this phrase strike a chord with you? Apparently, it first appeared in Peter Matthiessen’s book, The Snow Leopard, but I came across it quoted in Lindy Elkins-Tanton’s moving memoir Portrait of ...

Update (17:00 03 Mar): all members of the UK or international scientific community were invited to indicate their support by signing the letter. The opportunity to do so closed at 17:00 UK time on 03 ...

I am sick of impact factors and so is science. The impact factor might have started out as a good idea, but its time has come and gone. Conceived by Eugene Garfield in the 1970s as a useful tool for ...

This year I have read a number of books equivalent to the Answer to the Question of Life, the Universe and Everything, which is fewer than last year (62) or the year before (54). I was going to offer ...

The preachers and the scientists got soaked just the same I cannot point to a moment when I knew I was called to serve God like this. The image is more like a watercolour, built up in layers, or a ...

I’d washed the car for the occasion, but it rained again on Friday, liquefying the mud that had started to dry in the potholes, so that by the time I got to Lincoln I wondered why I’d bothered. The ...

In 2025, as the century closed its first quarter (where has the time gone?) I read (and listened to) 70-ish books, though the precise number rather depends on how one counts things. Mick Herron’s nine ...

On Tuesday evening I was asked by Research Professional News for my views on a new report from think tank UKDayOne, which is calling for the abolition of the Research Excellence Framework, unlovingly ...

My annual selection of favourites from the photographs I took in the past year is now available on Flickr. Do people still use Flickr? I have broken my usual rule of not including family photos ...