Physical Gallery

ATLAS detector, CERN

ATLAS detector. Composite image of the ATLAS (a torodial LHC apparatus) detector (circular) at CERN (the European particle physics laboratory) near Geneva, Switzerland. The detector will be placed around the large hadron collider (LHC), CERN's highest energy particle accelerator. A computer representation of the proton beams that will flow through the LHC has been added to the photograph. ATLAS is a general- purpose detector designed to measure the broadest possible range of particles and physical processes that could result from the collision of the proton beams at very high energies. A pilot run of the LHC is scheduled for summer 2007

© DAVID PARKER/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

The Airpump by Joseph Wright

The Air Pump by Joseph Wright (1734-1797). This artwork was painted in 1768. Its full title is An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump and is the second of the series of candlelight compositions that established Wright's name. It depicts a public demonstration of the effects of a vacuum created by an air pump using a live bird (top centre). The vacuum suffocates the bird and leads to a painful death, and a distressed female spectator can be seen (right). The Air Pump was influenced by meetings between Wright and his friends, when they demonstrated experiments and discussed the latest scientific developments

© SHEILA TERRY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Andrei Kolmogorov, Soviet mathematician

Andrei Kolmogorov (1903-1987), Soviet mathematician. Kolmogorov is widely considered one of the most prominent mathematicians of the 20th century. He made major advances in different scientific fields, including probability theory, topology (a type of geometry), turbulence, and classical mechanics. There are several theories, equations and laws in these fields named after Kolmogorov; from the Kolmogorov axioms in probability theory to the Kolmogorov space in topology. In 1931, two years after finishing his PhD at Moscow State University, he became a professor there. Later, he was head of the departments of probability, mathematical logic and statistics at the university. He also became dean of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics. Photographed in Moscow, Russia, in 1972

© RIA NOVOSTI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY