Plattform Mathematik, Astronomie und Physik
2019 was a year of consolidation of the increased activities of the Platform MAP benefitting from additional resources, a new President, Ernst Meyer, and a reorganised SCNAT management with the creation of the Science Division to coordinate the activities of all four SCNAT thematic Platforms. This led to a stronger presence and visibility of the Platform MAP both internally at SCNAT and also on the website and in events organised by member organisations.
The main highlights were the collaboration with Science & Cité on the celebration in Bern of the 50 years of the moon landing, and two symposia organised jointly with the Swiss Physical Society (SPS). The first one took place in August to mark the International Year of the Period Table (IYPT 2019) and the second celebrated in November the 125th anniversary of Georges Lemaître, the founding father of the Big Bang model of the universe.
The Platform MAP also offered in 2019 an important service to the other thematic platforms by taking up the coordination of the SCNAT project to extend the successful MAP Round Table and Roadmap model to other scientific disciplines, namely biology, chemistry and geosciences. The SCNAT has, indeed, received an official mandate by SERI to provide by early 2021 discipline-specific roadmaps for large research infrastructures to be funded in 2025-2028.
Besides these highlights, the Platform MAP had the immense pleasure to have two Swiss astronomers, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics 2019!
The Swiss Committee on Space Research (CSR) published in October 2019 a Report on Space Science in Switzerland. The 60-page document offers a broad overview of space science in Switzerland and recommendations for the future. This document will be considered as one of the roadmaps to be delivered to SERI by early 2021.
The Euler Committee published a new volume of the Leonhard Euler Opera Omnia. This year, it is Vol. 26 of Series II (Mechanics and astronomy) comprising eight of Euler's treatises on the theory of perturbations from the years 1763-1771 that turn on the movement of heavenly bodies about a central star modified by the effect of additional gravitational forces by the moon or other planets.
The Platform MAP supported a study on the motivation of Swiss high-school students via one of its member society, the Verein Schweizerischer Mathematik- und Physiklehrkräfte (VSMP). The report was published in the journal Gymnasium Helveticum at the end of 2019. Finally, one could add here the booklet Close to the Stars on research at Gornergrat produced by the Foundation for High Altitude Research Stations Jungfraujoch & Gornergrat (HFSJG).
The Platform MAP collaborated with the Swiss Physical Society (SPS) to organise jointly two symposia. The first took place on 30 August 2019 in Zurich to celebrate the International Year of the Periodic Table of the Elements (IYPT 2019). Under the title On the Origin of the Elements, this closing event of the Annual Meeting of the SPS highlighted the role of physics in the 150-year-long history of the periodic table. Three specialists - all from the MAP Plenum - presented the history of the discovery of the 118 elements, Big Bang and stellar nucleosynthesis, and the creation of heavy elements in stellar explosions.
The second event was a symposium to celebrate the 125th anniversary of Georges Edward Lemaître (1894-1966). Lemaître was a Belgian physicist, astronomer, and Roman Catholic priest. He proposed an expanding universe and is nowadays, finally, recognised as the central founding father of the Big Bang model of the Universe. The joint SPS-SCNAT event took place on 21 November 2019 in the Kuppelsaal of the University of Bern and attracted around 60-80 people. This successful event was followed in the evening by a talk by Friedrich-Karl Thielemann on the origin of the elements again in relation with the IYPT 2019.
One could also mention here the symposium of 7 February 2019 to mark the distinction of the Research Station Jungfraujoch as a new Historic Site of the European Physical Society (EPS). The station was further honored in April by awarding the Chemical Landmark 2019.
The Platform MAP does not organise its own school, but supports the schools of its member organisations, such as, in 2019, the Saas-Fee Course in astronomy, the CHIPP PhD Winter School, or the Zurich School of Crystallography.
In 2019, there were again two meetings of the Round Table "Swiss Representation in International Organisations and Research Infrastructures" (RoTIORI). On April 2nd with a special focus on gravitational wave research in Switzerland and on 13 November on the need of writing new or updated roadmaps by early 2021 for the funding period 2025-2028. In view of this, the photon community created a new Swiss Society for Photon Science (SSPh) analogue to the Swiss Neutron Science Society (SGN/SSSN). These two societies are expected to start writing a roadmap document for early 2021, whilst CHIPP and the SCFA should update their respective roadmaps on particle physics and astronomy.
On an official mandate by SERI, the SCNAT shall extend the successful MAP Round Table and Roadmap process for large research infrastructures to other disciplines. This additional task is coordinated by M. Türler and is taking up quite some resources. There was a strong need to inform and help the other thematic platforms (biology, chemistry and geosciences) to build up their community for being able to collaboratively write discipline-specific roadmaps by early 2021.
The Platform MAP financed in 2019 the trips to Brazil and Japan of Maurice Bourquin (Prof. em. at UniGE), the Swiss representative of the funding agencies in the Astroparticle Physics International Forum (APIF). There was a temporal need to do so following the wish of SERI to stop paying for this representation. In the future, CHIPP will have to find a solution to fund this representation.
The Schläfli Prize 2019 in Physics was awarded to Matteo Fadel (Univ. of Basel), who presented his work on quantum mechanics and received his prize on 5 November at his institute from the hands of Hans Peter Beck, President of the jury. He and five other candidates could attend the 69th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in early July dedicated this year to physics. The Schläfli Prize 2020 will be in Astronomy, the nominations have already been reviewed by the jury by the end of 2019.
Thomas Studer from the MAP Presidium succeeded to Norbert Hungerbühler in the «Kommission für Nachwuchsförderung» and joins there Hansjürg Stocker (VSMP) as a second member from the Platform MAP.
For the time being, the promotion of young scientists in the Platform MAP essentially takes place via its member societies, but the MAP Presidium discussed ideas for possible future initiatives on this theme at its last meeting of 2019. The website of the Platform MAP now has a dedicated webpage to group together news and other information on the topic, including press releases on Science Olympiads.
As usual, two Plenum meetings took place in 2019 with the representatives of the MAP member organisations and including an invited talk by a specialist. This was given in March by Prof. em. Maurice Bourquin (UniGE) on Thorium-Based Systems - a new direction for nuclear waste reduction and energy production and in November by Prof. em. Hanspeter Kraft (Uni. Basel) on The Bernoulli-Euler On-Line (BEOL) Archive.
The Presidium held three meetings in 2019. Besides the usual business, an important theme was to discuss what would be a useful follow-up to the successful Open Data Workshop of October 2018. The preferred idea was to launch a survey to collect the diverse opinion of active researchers in Switzerland on this timely topic. The launch of the survey was however postposed beyond 2019, because of several intervening events: the publication in May of a professional survey on Open Data repositories conducted by SNSF and swissuniversities; the publication in the summer by Swiss Academies of the factsheet Open Science in Switzerland: Opportunities and Challenges; and the launch of a working group to define an SCNAT concept for Science Culture. These other activities on the theme and a relative lack of support from other thematic platforms in the Science Division discouraged M. Türler to launch the survey as foreseen in summer 2019.
The internal management structure of SCNAT was reorganised at the start of 2019. A new Science Division lead by Stefan Nussbaum was created. It is a useful development enabling increased mutual information and sometimes collaboration between the various SCNAT thematic Platforms.
On the occasion of the 50 years of the moon landing, the University of Bern organised a big event called ?Bern im All? to celebrate their participation to the Apollo 11 mission with a solar-wind sail experiment. Two associated events were organised by Science & Cité with the collaboration and support of the Platform MAP. The first was an interactive evening event in the House of Academies called Back to the Future: 1969-2069 on the memories associated with the year 1969, other great scientific achievements since then, and expectations for 2069. The second event was a booth on the Bundesplatz on Sunday, 30 June offering a live survey by smartphones on the public opinion about the exploration of the moon and mars, as well as material (Legos, pens, etc.) to allow children to construct or draw their representation of future human settlements on the moon or mars. SCNAT was also associated to a conference on 26 June organised by the Kornhausforum entitled Moonhoax - Mondlandung und Verschwörungstheorien. Finally, the network of the Platform MAP was used to promote the participation to the Perspective Day on Space Science and Exploration, which was a prominent event in the Kursaal.
The Platform MAP was approached by the SPS to become more active in the promotion of UNESCO's International Day of Light (IDL) celebrated every year on May 16th. The Platform became in 2019 a new national node for Switzerland in addition to SPS and Swissphotonics.
The website of the Platform MAP announces now most of the events and activities of the member organisations. It was complemented by a new page on the promotion of young talents to group together activities and offers in this domain, as well as a Network page with a series of links to various research groups constituting the MAP community in Switzerland.
The content of the website of the Euler Committee was migrated in autumn to the SCNAT web portal. This gives it increased visibility in preparation of the celebration of the completion of the Euler edition foreseen for November 2020.