On Friday we (School of Maths and Physics at Unversity of Surrey) hosted a celebration of the (still-ongoing) career of our colleague Jim Al-Khalili on the occasion of his 60th birthday. There was a slightly more formal daytime conference with a series of talks by people who have worked with Jim over the years, either on academic things or on media and outreach activities. I gave a short talk, going over the period of our work together where we started looking at proton tunnelling in nuclei - including on papers which announced the discovery of new isotopes (Re-159, Ta-155, W-157 and Os-161), then moving on to more detailed work on tunnelling mechanisms in quantum mechanics which ultimately led to further developments on proton tunnelling in DNA, though I didn't talk about that much as I knew others were covering it.
Following the more formal conference-like event, we ended the day with a more informal "In Conversation" in which Jim was interviewed by Roger Highfield, the author, journalist, and Science Museum director. That gave the chance for audience members to ask questions, and ended with a round of "Happy Birthday". I knew it was coming, so I was all set to record it on my phone. Results are in the embedded tweet below
The moment when @RogerHighfield led the audience in singing Happy Birthday to @jimalkhalili at yesterday's celebration of Jim's 60th birthday pic.twitter.com/pwWFP2MrHz
— Paul Stevenson gleet@mastodon.social (@gleet_tweet) May 27, 2023
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