Will Thomas
LightNews LightNews
banner
williamthomas.bsky.social
Will Thomas
@williamthomas.bsky.social
1.3K followers 210 following 520 posts
Director of Research in History, Policy, and Culture at the American Institute of Physics. Author of Rational Action: The Sciences of Policy in Britain and America, 1940-1960. Views expressed are my own.
Posts Replies Media Videos
williamthomas.bsky.social
I don't condone it, but what do you expect, going outside in 10 degrees without a hat and a silly haircut, spouting off like that?
January 18, 2026 at 12:14 AM
williamthomas.bsky.social
Speaking as a Minnesotan, oh, gosh, yeah, that'll sting, for sure. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/17/u...
The influencer, Jake Lang, who was among the pardoned Jan. 6 rioters, was eventually chased into the lobby of a hotel by a throng of counterprotesters who threw water balloons at him when outside temperatures hovered around 10 degrees, prompting police officers to respond. Mr. Lang was seen with a trickle of blood on the back of his head before disappearing into the hotel. It was unclear how he suffered the injury. The counterprotest, led by The People’s Action Coalition Against Trump, vastly outnumbered the people gathered by Mr. Lang for his March Against Minnesota Fraud. Mr. Lang had vowed to burn a Quran and march through a neighborhood with a heavy Somali population, but apparently did not follow through. Demonstrators who had gathered in opposition to Mr. Lang also denounced Immigration and Customs Enforcement, holding signs that read “ICE Out of Minnesota.” They blasted music from the Disney musical “Frozen.”
January 17, 2026 at 11:50 PM
williamthomas.bsky.social
Sorely tempted
"$51.99 USD Paperback"
January 16, 2026 at 8:41 PM
williamthomas.bsky.social
The semiannual AIP History Newsletter is out! The feature article highlights a surge in scholarship around experiments on quantum entanglement. The topic is most associated with tests of Bell's theorem but the history predates and is broader than those efforts.
aip.brightspotcdn.com/83/0f/cc825f...
A diagram of Carl Kocher's apparatus to test photon correlation, which John Clauser and Stuart Freedman later adapted for their test of Bell's theorem.
December 22, 2025 at 1:10 PM
williamthomas.bsky.social
“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else—if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”

“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place."
December 20, 2025 at 12:18 AM
williamthomas.bsky.social
AIP is hiring the next director of our FYI science policy news service. I worked on FYI 2016-2023. Mitch Ambrose is stepping aside as director after a full decade living the week-to-week of science policy. Believe me, it's a tough but satisfying #scipol job.

workforcenow.adp.com/mascsr/defau...
Screenshot of the web promo for the latest FYI weekly newsletter, featuring the Pentagon
December 13, 2025 at 2:48 PM
williamthomas.bsky.social
By the way, I adore this chart. Even big cost increases don't necessarily doom projects, but delays can substantially reduce their scientific worth due to their displacement within the historical succession of complementary projects.
December 13, 2025 at 2:37 PM
williamthomas.bsky.social
We've squeezed in one last AIP Lyne Starling Trimble Public Event for 2025. Come to our DC location at 6pm on Wednesday, December 10 to catch David DeVorkin's lecture, "The Quiet Genius of George Carruthers."

RSVP here:
www.aip.org/history/davi...
November 21, 2025 at 9:35 PM
williamthomas.bsky.social
Sorry for going on about this, but it's fascinating. This is an interesting recollection from @preskill.bsky.social about Stu Freedman's early reaction to an early divergence from the results he got with John Clauser in '72. A wry remark? A nod to Bohm? 🤷https://repository.aip.org/node/129433
October 28, 2025 at 4:29 PM
williamthomas.bsky.social
I have about 10 pages on this in my book Rational Action, so I'm excited to see others who get how interesting they are!
October 27, 2025 at 10:58 AM
williamthomas.bsky.social
On the Uncertainty Principle, I just now ran into this gem from Asher Peres's obituary: #HPS
His textbook Quantum Theory: Concepts and Methods (Kluwer Academic, 1993) is arguably the modern successor of John von Neumann’s book Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (Princeton U. Press, 1955). The uncertainty principle, for which Asher had little use, is relegated to a single entry in the index that points to the same page of the index.
October 22, 2025 at 4:32 PM
williamthomas.bsky.social
One does not simply detect a gravitational wave.

Next week, physicists, historians, and philosophers will gather in Potsdam to examine efforts to tackle the two-body problem in general relativity that is behind all those black hole mergers. See who will be there: www.aip.org/history/work... #HPS
Boromir "One does not simply" meme image Conference poster, "In Pursuit of Gravitational Waves: Solving the Two-Body Problem in General Relativity"
October 17, 2025 at 2:11 PM
williamthomas.bsky.social
And Martinis? His dad was a refugee from Yugoslavia. repository.aip.org/node/129661
My dad was born in Croatia. As it happened, his father left for the United States shortly before the war. And the family left behind were kind of by themselves over the war and thirteen to seventeen. So, he had a very difficult childhood, and especially the teenage years, and actually never talked about it much. I think he did quite well for having such a difficult time growing up. After the war, his family was trying to get to the United States. Yugoslavia was beginning to close up at the time because of the communist government. In the end, escaped from Yugoslavia and had security people chasing him to make an example of him. In the old country his family fished. So, when he went to Washington state that is what he did with his father and brother. During the off season he came down to San Pedro in California, where he had relatives, and met my mom.
October 7, 2025 at 8:17 PM
williamthomas.bsky.social
Congratulations to this year's winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics. Be sure to check out our oral histories with:

John Martinis: repository.aip.org/node/129661

Michel Devoret: repository.aip.org/node/129778
October 7, 2025 at 12:28 PM
williamthomas.bsky.social
Adams, by the way, is fascinating. Not only did he not have a PhD, he had no university education whatsoever. Yet, he rose to become director of the UK's fusion research lab at Culham and a co-leader of CERN. 📷 © CERN #histsci #HPS royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1...
October 3, 2025 at 2:21 PM
williamthomas.bsky.social
I like how the impression here is of the hurricanes approaching the US and basically taking a look and saying, "woah, let's get outta here" www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025...
October 1, 2025 at 2:56 PM
williamthomas.bsky.social
After a long hiatus, AIP's postdoc position for historians of the physical sciences is back!

3 years, $77,500 per year + benefits. Work in the Washington, DC area, close to Univ of Maryland. Open to US citizens/permanent residents. Apply by Nov. 15! #histsci

workforcenow.adp.com/mascsr/defau...
A green space with bushes and trees and a helix sculpture next to a beige building.
September 30, 2025 at 6:06 PM
williamthomas.bsky.social
Good for FYI to point this out, from the latest OSTP/OMB R&D priorities memo. I think it's important to retain the memory that five years ago DEI wasn't even controversial. www.aip.org/fyi/ai-and-q...
Text clip: "The memo appears to reflect the Trump administration’s hard turn against certain STEM education programs and diversity initiatives. An earlier memo published during Trump’s first term overtly called for agencies to prioritize “activities that advance innovation in STEM education and increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM.” This objective is ridiculed in the latest memo, and the Trump administration has pursued an aggressive campaign to eliminate grants, programs, and policies that have even passing connections to DEI."
September 26, 2025 at 10:41 PM
williamthomas.bsky.social
I see Peter Baker and the Times are at the bold vanguard of political analysis once again.
September 14, 2025 at 1:22 PM
williamthomas.bsky.social
Many thanks to Bob and @yangyangcheng.bsky.social for discussing why they value physics history. Unexpectedly, for both, their interest was sparked by the ongoing presence of the Manhattan Project around them, in Oak Ridge and Chicago, respectively. aip.brightspotcdn.com/89/11/30815e...
August 26, 2025 at 2:56 PM
williamthomas.bsky.social
The 2025 AIP Early Career Conference for Historians of the Physical Sciences is now behind us. Many thanks to our hosts at the Federal University of Bahia in Salvador, Brazil. We have a lot of #histsci talent and bonhomie carrying our field into the future.

More info: www.aip.org/history/prog...
A group of about 50 people standing in casual clothing behind letters saying "AIPECC25". The foreground is a square-shaped pool. There is an ocean in the background and blue skies with sparse clouds overhead.
August 19, 2025 at 2:45 PM
williamthomas.bsky.social
Also, congratulations to the winners of the 2024 and 2025 IUPAP Early Career Prize in the History of Physics, who will receive their medals at the meeting: my wonderful former AIP colleague Joanna Behrman and Barbara Hof, currently a postdoc at the University of Lausanne www.iuchpp.org/prize
Portraits of Joanna Behrman and Barbara Hof
August 1, 2025 at 2:48 PM
williamthomas.bsky.social
During the Red Scare...

-There was a 7-year smear campaign against the head of the Nat'l Bureau of Standards
-INS hoped to revoke Einstein's citizenship
-Fisk University let one of Oppenheimer's students go
-Berkeley lost every theorist on its physics faculty

aip.brightspotcdn.com/89/11/30815e...
July 7, 2025 at 2:14 PM
williamthomas.bsky.social
I wrote about physics during the Red Scare in our latest History Newsletter because it is a key example of when US physicists were forced to confront more bare-knuckled forms of politics, as they are now. aip.brightspotcdn.com/89/11/30815e...
July 2, 2025 at 1:45 PM
williamthomas.bsky.social
Sixty years ago today, the American Institute of Physics established a "Center for History and Philosophy of Physics," building on four years of pilot efforts. Charles Weiner was director and Joan Warnow led the Niels Bohr Library & Archives. Their work set a model for many efforts to come.
A balding man (Weiner) and a blond, long-haired woman (Warnow), both elegantly dressed, examine sheets of paper in front of a wood and glass display case.
July 1, 2025 at 1:27 PM