The legacy of the Haldde Observatory

A historical review of the establishment of the Haldde Observatory in Bossekop, Kaafjord, Finnmark, in northern Norway is presented together with some of the scientific outcomes of the efforts and the aftermath of this enterprise that led to the establishment of the University of Tromsø in 1968 and finally the inauguration of the Haldde Observatory as a historic site by the European Physical Society in 2018.

The Young Minds Leadership Meeting 2021 a virtual experience

The Young Minds (YM) programme of the European Physical Society (EPS) was initiated 10 years ago, with the goal to connect young students and researchers all over Europe and to support their professional and personal growth.

EPL in an eventful environment

Europhysics Letters was cofounded in 1986 by 17 European learned societies, and merged the two existing Letter journals Lettere al Nuovo Cimento – published by the Società Italiana di Fisica (SIF) – and the Journal de Physique Lettres, from the Société Françcaise de Physique (SFP). The original idea was to create a real European Letter journal competitive with Physical Review Letters of the American Physical Society. The major scientific force behind EPL is the European Physical Society (EPS) that celebrated its 50th anniversary only last year in Geneva. The publication of Europhysics Letters, re-baptized EPL in 2007 to emphasize its global impact, is a joint venture of the publishing houses of three physical societies: the Institute of Physics (IOP), the SIF, and the SFP.

Science and long-term thinking

The Club of Rome, founded a few months before the European Physical Society, first addressed “the predicament of mankind”. The founders, among them the Italian industrialist Aurelio Peccei and Alexander King, then the head of science at the OECD, were looking for methods of mathematically based forecasts for the future of humankind and of the life supporting systems on this planet.