The fourth paradigm!

Marie Curie, looking directly at the camera, her head is resting on her hand

DC friends! Registration is open for our last Lyne Starling Trimble public event of this spring:

Dava Sobel
Wednesday, May 27
"At Mme. Curie's Lab: Radioactivity and a Place for Women in Science"

More details here: www.aip.org/history/dava...

Last week, with support of Oppenheimer’s grandchildren, @aiphistory.bsky.social opened access to three oral histories with him.

This is core to the work our history team does connecting today’s scientific community with voices we steward across generations.

More here: www.aip.org/library/ex-l...

Into the Gloria Lubkin papers: A behind-the-scenes look at her reporting in China for Physics Today In 1979, Lubkin traveled to China to report on the state of physics innovation post-Cultural Revolution. Archives Fellow Dorothy Tang takes a deep dive into the Lubkin papers to understand the details...

In 2023, AIP acquired the records of the long-time editor for Physics Today, Gloria Lubkin. This post takes a look at her seminal trip to China in 1979. www.aip.org/library/ex-libris-univer...

New GAO report makes the case for the need for more data on graduate student and postdoc compensation. Also provides some useful visualizations mapping funding from various agencies to specific STEM fields -> www.gao.gov/products/gao...

The Life and Legacy of Hertha Sponer Behind-the-Scenes Look at the March 20th Trimble Lecture

Hertha Sponer’s story is getting more attention, but there’s still much to surface. This post, built around an exhibit for Elise Crull’s recent lecture, is a great way into Sponer’s work and the archival record around her—connecting collections, people, and research. www.aip.org/library/ex-l...

Very honoured to have an AIP Weekly piece on Kuhn's frustrations with interviewing quantum physicists! For those interested in more on this, I have a few forthcoming papers on this (which I would be happy to share via DM) as well as a book manuscript in progress about Kuhn and quantum physics

It brought back fond memoriesod @ibogost.com’s Latour Litanizer www.bogost.com/blog/latour_...

The Song of Other Things | Rafil Kroll-Zaidi This article is about “emptiness” in a general sense.

“The Song of Other Things” is a poem
made from disambiguation statements posted at the beginning of Wikipedia articles -> thebaffler.com/poems/excerp... @marjeec.bsky.social shared this with me and it really shows she gets me. Always up for contemporary Borgesian vibes.

The NSF 2027 budget has noted that they will close out the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Science Program (SBE). This is not a good thing. nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/FY-202...

This is a facanating must read for anyone interested in oral history or the history of science.

Article spotlight: Eun-Joo Ahn on the road to Mount Wilson Observatory AIP History Weekly Edition: March 13, 2026

Thanks @aip.bsky.social for highlighting @hsnatsci.bsky.social's article on roads as scientific infrastructure. www.aip.org/history/arti...

I’m so glad to hear you had a great day. The whole community is lucky to have hardworking and dedicated people like you showing up for libraries everyday at IMLS.

Elise Crull - Hertha Sponer and the Path from Electron Diffraction to Wave/particle Duality YouTube video by AIP History

Thanks to everyone who joined us on Friday for Elise Crull's lecture on Hertha Sponer's experimental work on the wave-like properties of electrons and its place in the history of quantum physics. The video is now posted!

Policy primer: Social media screening proposed for ESTA If implemented, new vetting requirements could dissuade international researchers who do not need visas from visiting the US.

AIP's head of policy research, Lindsay Milliken, has a new primer up on the Trump administration's pending proposal to require short-term visitors to the US who do not require visas to open their social media to screening. (This requirement is already in place for student and exchange visas.)

New Survey of Earned Doctorates (2024) data highlight how central international talent is to U.S. science.

Doctorates to temporary visa holders in S&E fields have grown 76% over the past two decades, outpacing U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

Full report -> ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf26315

You can read the full paper online here -> philsci-archive.pitt.edu/24208/

See more about India’s work here -> www.india-bhalla-ladd.com

Exciting to see & hear India Bhalla-Ladd’s prize winning paper at #APSSummit26

Powerful use of @aip.bsky.social archives to explore the role that technical typists played in resolving the page charge crisis.

Broadly relevant to anyone working on the history of scholarly communication.

The capstone email appraisal approach NARA developed (www.dpconline.org/blog/capston... ) is great for federal records, but my sense is many people at nonprofits are (for various good reasons) not comfortable with the idea of keeping all outgoing email from accounts related to specific roles.

Yes, email archiving has huge potential here, but the tensions around what to keep and not keep is very much in play there as well.

2026 AIP Research Agenda

Thanks for this, that is consistent with some of what I am hearing/seeing. Which is also part of why we made this one of the 5 major initiatives we are focusing on in our research agenda this year -> www.aip.org/aip/2026-aip...

We are doing a lot of work on ours currently. But if there is interest, we could explore sharing some or all of it. The NBLA does have its collections policy up, which is related www.aip.org/library/dona... AAAS has this up -> www.aaas.org/archives/aaa...

We are studying digital records management and preservation practices in Science & Engineering societies. I'm curious for any suggestions of relevant research on digital records & scholarly societies. Most work on digital org records seems to be focused on college/universities or government records.

Proposed U.S. Immigration Changes to Student and Scholar Visa Categories This white paper is intended to inform the physics community of the proposed changes to F and J visa regulations and concomitant Certificates of Eligibility, as well as of the potential impacts on stu...

Don't miss this @apsphysics.bsky.social white paper on proposed changes to F and J visa rules and what they could mean for graduate education and the research workforce.

Great to see it use longitudinal data from our @aip.bsky.social research team.

Read it here www.aps.org/publications...

Chart of Physics doctorates earned from 1978 to 2024, with a steady increase in the number of women but overarching trends closely tracking the number of men earning PhDs

Chart showing doctorates earned in astronomy from 1978 to 2024 with women making steady gains and closing in on parity, and an overarching increase in number of PhDs earned linked to the increasing numbers of women entering the field.

The AIP stats team has released its latest data of physics & astronomy PhD trends, with breakdown by gender. What is extraordinary to me is how clearly the overall trends exhibit an important gender dimension, and that that story is quite different between physics and astronomy.

There is broad bipartisan support for increased public investment in the scientific enterprise in the U.S. New data from Research!America show 7 in 10 say Congress should invest more to advance science & tech. This is up across the political spectrum. -> www.researchamerica.org/sd_survey/20...

Great explanation on how and why @ncar-ucar.bsky.social is such a singular and critical component of U.S. science infrastructure.

Thanks for this great session!

In the vein of recent conversations about people being the ends rather than the means for doing science: