Issue 1, 2014
Issue 4, 2007
One of astronomy's leading figures, Bernard Pagel was Professor at Nordita from 1989 until 1998. He moved to Copenhagen after compulsory retirement from the Royal Greenwich Observatory.
Following his retirement from Nordita he returned to the Astronomy Centre at the University of Sussex, continuing to make observing trips abroad and to attend international conferences, where he was in great demand.
He was a world leader in cosmical chemistry, especially in studies of the chemical evolution of galaxies. In 1990 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society and in 1992 he was elected to the Royal Society. At Nordita and the University of Copenhagen he taught courses, which led to the publication of his monograph "Nucleosynthesis and Chemical Evolution of Galaxies". Shortly before his death, Bernard completed the manuscript for the second edition of the book.
His death from cancer on 13 July deprives astronomy of one of its leading figures.
We are delighted to announce that Risto Nieminen, Academy Professor at the Laboratory of Physics at Helsinki University of Technology, has been appointed Director beginning July 1, 2007. Risto works in computational condensed-matter and materials physics, with interests in nanosciences and nanotechnology, complex materials and multiscale modelling of their properties and processing, high-performance computing and networking, numerical and computational methods. He is also interested in the history of science and the dialogue between science and society.
August afternoon outside Nordita
Nordita is both old and new. This year is the 50th anniversary of the institute, having been founded around Niels Bohr in Copenhagen in 1957. The "new" Nordita in Stockholm faces exciting challenges and opportunities. The world and also the world of theoretical physics are very different from what they were in 1957. I look forward to working for Nordita, in helping to make it flourish also in the future. To succeed, Nordita needs the support of the physical sciences research community, not only in the greater Stockholm area and Sweden, but throughout Norden. I will continue to be based at Helsinki University of Technology, but will try spend as much time in Stockholm as possible, and also to make visits to the other great sites of theoretical physics research in the Nordic countries. I am happy to receive suggestions, input and feedback in matters related to Nordita, by email or other means of communication.
Nordita, the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics, was founded in Copenhagen 1957. Until 2006, Nordita was organized directly under the Nordic Council of Ministers. On Jan. 1, 2007. Nordita moved to the AlbaNova University Center in Stockholm
One basic concept under which Nordita operates is scientific programs. A scientific program is a workshop where a limited number of scientists work together on specific problems for a period of 1-2 months with at most 25 participants, a core of 8-12 internationally recognized leaders in the subject area of the program, 5-8 invited scientists from the Nordic countries, and limited number of accompanying postdocs and PhD students. Two principal investigators (PIs) are responsible for coordinating a program.
Nordita is a Nordic research institute, and in order to emphasize the Nordic aspect programs should be organized jointly by Nordita and a Nordic institute outside Sweden. Costs for the participating Nordic institute will be reimbursed by Nordita.
Five programs are funded by Nordita for the period 2007-2008:
Nordita now invites members of the scientific community, both in the Nordic countries and worldwide, to propose scientific programs for 2008/2009.
A successful application for a scientific program should include:
The proposals will be evaluated by Nordita?s Scientific Advisory Committee. The board will decide on successful applications in November 2007. Proposals for special scientific programs for fall 2008 and spring 2009 should be submitted as PDF files to programs@nordita.org before 15 October 2007.
Potential program participants are encouraged to apply on the respective web pages of these programs.
15 August - 30 September 2007
Focus of the program: quantum fluids, Bose-Einstein condensates, supersolids, quantum hall systems, exotic states such as projected quantum fluid states of metallic hydrogen, topological defects and vortex matter in quantum fluids.
Home page: www.nordita.org/qf2007
Organizers: Egor Babaev (KTH), Hans Hansson (SU), Anders Karlhede (SU), Susanne Viefers (UIO), Mats Wallin (KTH), Frank Wilczek (MIT)
1-29 February 2008
Home page: http://agenda.albanova.se/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=322
Organizers: Axel Brandenburg (Nordita), Raphaël Plasson (Montpellier), Anja C. Andersen (Copenhagen)
1-31 May 2008
Home page: http://agenda.albanova.se/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=296
Organizers: Erik Aurell (KTH), Mikko Alava (Helsinki)
Two months during the spring 2008
Organizers: Katri Huitu (Helsinki), Per Osland (Bergen)
16 March - 19 April 2008
Organizers: Anvar Shukurov (Newcastle UK), Kandaswamy Subramanian (Pune India), Maarit J. Korpi (Helsinki)
14-17 August in Stockholm.
The purpose of the meeting was to bring the core developers together and to allow others to interact with them and learn more about the Pencil Code (http://www.nordita.org/pencil-code/). The code is a multipurpose code for massively parallel computing (especially on the cheaper Linux cluster).
It includes optionally hydrodynamics, magnetic fields, radiation, ionization, ulti-species dust dynamics with coagulation, and certain reaction-diffusion quations. It is developed and maintained under the Concurrent Versioning System (CVS; see http://www.nongnu.org/cvs/) by around 25 people with check-in ermission and has been downloaded by over 450 registered users (without check-in permission).
This was the third meeting of this kind which brought together some 19 Pencil Code users from around the world including Calgary, Cambridge, Freiburg, Halifax, Heidelberg, Helsinki, London, Potsdam, Stanford, Stockholm, Toulouse,
and Uppsala. The program of the 4 day meeting included 19 talks of about 30+15 minutes with science results and 9 discussion sessions where a number of emerging issues were considered. Some of the scientific highlights include presentations about the co-evolution of dust and gas in magnetized self-gravitating shearing sheets, the introduction of curvilinear coordinates, hydrodynamic and hydromagnetic simulations of Taylor-Couette flows in cylindrical coordinates, the implementation of an implicit solver of the heat equation and of a multigrid solver for the Poisson equation. The discussion topics included in particular the anticipated migration from CVS to the ubversion repository, the change to version 3 of the GPL license agreement, improvements of the suite of automatic nightly tests of the code, improvements of the manual, a multi-author paper discussing methods and tests, as well as discussions about curvilinear coordinate systems and the option of using upwinding derivatives in cartesian and noncartesian coordinate systems. All talks are recorded and now publicly available as streaming videos; see http://agenda.albanova.se/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=185.
A detailed report of the meeting is available on the web under the address http://agenda.albanova.se/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=185.
→ Link to electronic preprints: www.nordita.org/preprints
The next Nordita board meeting takes place in Stockholm on 31 August.
If you have information about meetings or other items that would be useful to include in Nordita News, please send it to Anne Jifält, Nordita, email: anne@kth.se