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ATOM Festival Presents… Professor Frank Close OBE
March 25 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
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ATOM Presents… at the Amey Theatre
Professor Frank Close OBE is one of the founders of ATOM Festival. His latest book, Destroyer of Worlds, is a prequel and sequel to the movie Oppenheimer, and tells the story of how the chance glimpse of energy leaking from the atom in 1896 led to the modern nuclear age.
Talk title: Harwell @ 80: from quarks to quasars and protons to proteins
Date: Wednesday 25th March
Time: Doors at 19:00, talk starts at 19:30
Venue: Amey Theatre, Abingdon School, Park Road, Abingdon, OX14 1DE
Cost: Adult £10 (19+), Child £5 (under 18)
2026 is the 80th anniversary of the establishment of “The Atomic”, officially the “Atomic Energy Research Establishment” at Harwell.
Originally built in a ‘rural backwater’ to develop UK leadership in the peaceful use of nuclear energy. ‘The Atomic’ has transformed scientific understanding across the whole range of scales, from quarks to quasars and protons to proteins, as well as altering local geography and society.
Today, the campus includes work ranging from vaccines and the structure of matter to the vastness of space and astronomy.
The talk will show how science and technology have changed our world in the last 80 years and how much of that change can be traced back to Harwell. Harwell @ 80 is time to celebrate our nuclear heritage.
More about the speaker:
Prof. Close OBE is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford and a former head of the theoretical physics division at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. He is the author of several bestselling books including ‘Half Life’ (the true story of Harwell physicist Bruno Pontecorvo), ‘Trinity: The Treachery and Pursuit of the Most Dangerous Spy in History’ about the life of Klaus Fuchs and “Elusive”, the story of the Higgs boson which was selected as a science book of 2022 by The Times and Sunday Times, The Guardian, Economist, Nature and Times Literary Supplement. Read more by clicking the button above.
