The Blackett Laboratory is part of the

Imperial College Faculty of Natural Sciences The Faculty of Natural Sciences is one of the three main faculties of Imperial College London in London, England. It was formed in 2001 from the former Royal College of Science, a constituent college of Imperial College which dated back to 1848, ...

and has housed the Department of Physics at

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

since its completion in 1961. Named after experimental physicist

Patrick Blackett Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett, Baron Blackett (18 November 1897 – 13 July 1974) was a British experimental physicist known for his work on cloud chambers, cosmic rays, and paleomagnetism, winning the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1948. ...

who established a laboratory at the college, the building is located on the corner of

Prince Consort Road Prince Consort Road is a street in London, United Kingdom. It is named after Prince Albert, consort to Queen Victoria. It is located between Queen's Gate to the west and Exhibition Road to the east, running parallel to Kensington Gore. Several ...

and

Queen's Gate Queen's Gate is a street in South Kensington, London, England. It runs south from Kensington Gardens' Queen's Gate (the edge of which gardens are here followed by Kensington Road) to Old Brompton Road, intersecting Cromwell Road. The street is ...

Kensington Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the West End of London, West of Central London. The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up b ...

. The department ranks 11th on QS's 2018 world university rankings.

History

The Department of Physics at Imperial College dates back to the physics department of the Normal School of Science, later the

Royal College of Science The Royal College of Science was a higher education institution located in South Kensington; it was a constituent college of Imperial College London from 1907 until it was wholly absorbed by Imperial in 2002. Still to this day, graduates from th ...

. As part of the formation of Imperial, the Royal College was moved into a new building at South Kensington in 1906, which also housed the Chemistry Department. From 1906 to 1932 the head of the Physics Department was Prof. H. L. Callender, famous for his work on the properties of steam. G P Thomson (son of J J Thomson) replaced Callender in 1932, and worked in part on nuclear physics and atomic weaponry. He was followed P. M. S. Blackett as head in around 1953, with the construction of the new Physics building starting at about the same time. Blackett refocused efforts from low-energy physics to high-energy nuclear physics, and under him research started into

cosmic ray Cosmic rays are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the Solar System in our own ...

s and the use of

bubble chamber A bubble chamber is a vessel filled with a superheated transparent liquid (most often liquid hydrogen) used to detect electrically charged particles moving through it. It was invented in 1952 by Donald A. Glaser, for which he was awarded the 196 ...

s, with the first liquid hydrogen bubble chamber in Western Europe being constructed at the department. Work on satellite instrumentation resulted in departmentally designed equipment ending up on NASA satellites in 1962. Physics continued in the new “old” RCS building until the new Physics building was finished in 1961, which subsequently became known as the Blackett Laboratory.Department History
Accessed 28 January 2017 In 2019, it was announced that the laboratory would be constructing a magnetometer instrument for the

European Space Agency , owners = , headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France , coordinates = , spaceport = Guiana Space Centre , seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png , seal_size = 130px , image = Views in the Main Control Room (1205 ...

Solar Orbiter The Solar Orbiter (SolO) is a Sun-observing satellite developed by the European Space Agency (ESA). SolO, designed to obtain detailed measurements of the inner heliosphere and the nascent solar wind, will also perform close observations of th ...

in a mission to study the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

. The satellite launched on an

Atlas V Atlas V is an expendable launch system and the fifth major version in the Atlas (rocket family), Atlas launch vehicle family. It was originally designed by Lockheed Martin, now being operated by United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture be ...

from the

Cape Canaveral AFS Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) is an installation of the United States Space Force's Space Launch Delta 45, located on Cape Canaveral in Brevard County, Florida. Headquartered at the nearby Patrick Space Force Base, the statio ...

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

on the 9 February, 2020. In November 2019, a team of Imperial physicists was chosen to design parts of the

Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is a neutrino experiment under construction, with a near detector at Fermilab and a far detector at the Sanford Underground Research Facility that will observe neutrinos produced at Fermilab. An int ...

, which is to be a long baseline accelerator

neutrino A neutrino ( ; denoted by the Greek letter ) is a fermion (an elementary particle with spin of ) that interacts only via the weak interaction and gravity. The neutrino is so named because it is electrically neutral and because its rest mass ...

experiment in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

Academics

Study

Undergraduate

The department offers three year

BSc A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...

and four year undergraduate

MSci MSCI Inc. is an American finance company headquartered in New York City. MSCI is a global provider of equity, fixed income, real estate indexes, multi-asset portfolio analysis tools, ESG and climate products. It operates the MSCI World, MSCI All ...

courses. The department has connections with universities in Europe, allowing undergraduate master's students to study-abroad during their course. All students graduating with an undergraduate degree from the department are also awarded the Associateship of the

, ARCS. This degree is professionally accredited by the

Institute of Physics The Institute of Physics (IOP) is a UK-based learned society and professional body that works to advance physics education, research and application. It was founded in 1874 and has a worldwide membership of over 20,000. The IOP is the Physica ...

. Holders of accredited degrees can follow a route to Institute Membership and the CPhys professional qualification.

Postgraduate

Taught postgraduate courses last for one year leading to a MSc, with research degrees leading to either a

MRes A Master of Research (abbr. MRes, MARes, MScRes, or MScR) degree is an internationally recognised advanced postgraduate research degree. In most cases, the degree is designed to prepare students for doctoral research. Increasingly, the degree may ...

or PhD. All students graduating with any of the postgraduate degrees (MSc, MRes, PhD) are also awarded the

Diploma of Imperial College The Diploma of the Imperial College (DIC) is an academic certificate awarded by Imperial College London to its postgraduate students upon graduation. Until 2007, Imperial was part of the University of London and Imperial College bestowed the Un ...

, DIC. There are also a number of short-courses for practising engineers. Blackett Laboratory Entrance Hall from stairs

Rankings

The college ranks 9th on the

Times Higher Education ''Times Higher Education'' (''THE''), formerly ''The Times Higher Education Supplement'' (''The Thes''), is a British magazine reporting specifically on news and issues related to higher education. Ownership TPG Capital acquired TSL Education ...

natural sciences subjects rankings, and the department in particular ranks 11th in the world, and 3rd in the UK after

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

and

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

, on the

QS World University Rankings ''QS World University Rankings'' is an annual publication of university rankings by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). The QS system comprises three parts: the global overall ranking, the subject rankings (which name the world's top universities for the ...

. Domestically, the department ranks 6th in the

Complete University Guide Three national rankings of universities in the United Kingdom are published annually – by ''The Complete University Guide'', ''The Guardian'' and jointly by ''The Times'' and ''The Sunday Times''. Rankings have also been produced in the past ...

's 2021 physics rankings. Blackett Laboratory from the Main Walkway

People

The laboratory has connections to many physicists who had studied or taught at the department: * Sir Peter Knight * Sir John Pendry * Sir Tom Kibble * Sir Tejinder Singh Virdee *

Sir Steven Cowley Sir Steven Charles Cowley (born 1959) is a British theoretical physicist and international authority on nuclear fusion and Plasma physics, astrophysical plasmas. He has served as director of the United States Department of Energy (DOE) Princeto ...

Edward Hinds Edward Allen Hinds FInstP FAPS FRS (born 8 Sept 1949) is a British physicist noted for his work with cold matter. He was educated at Dame Allan's School in Newcastle before being offered a place at Jesus College, Oxford, where he matriculate ...

Jenny Nelson Jenny Nelson is Professor of Physics in the Blackett Laboratory and Head of the Climate change mitigation team at the Grantham Institute - Climate Change and Environment at Imperial College London. Education Nelson was educated at the Universi ...

Fay Dowker Helen Fay Dowker (; born 9 September 1965) is a British physicist who is a current professor of theoretical physics at Imperial College London. Education Dowker attended Manchester High School for Girls. As a student, she was interested in wor ...

Jess Wade Jessica Alice Feinmann Wade (born October 1988) is a British physicist in the Blackett Laboratory at Imperial College London, specialising in Raman spectroscopy. Her research investigates polymer-based organic Light-emitting diode, light emitti ...

* Michele Dougherty *

Joanna Haigh Joanna Dorothy Haigh (born 7 May 1954) is a British physicist and academic. Before her retirement in 2019 she was Professor of Atmospheric Physics at Imperial College London, and co-director of the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and En ...

* Matt Taylor *

Abdus Salam Mohammad Abdus Salam Salam adopted the forename "Mohammad" in 1974 in response to the anti-Ahmadiyya decrees in Pakistan, similarly he grew his beard. (; ; 29 January 192621 November 1996) was a Punjabi Pakistani theoretical physicist and a ...

* Libby Jackson of the

UK Space Agency The United Kingdom Space Agency (UKSA) is an executive agency of the Government of the United Kingdom, responsible for the United Kingdom's civil space programme. It was established on 1 April 2010 to replace the British National Space Centre ...

* Jonathan Pritchard (2017 of the Fowler Award for Astronomy)news at imperial.ac.uk/physics
Accessed 28 January 2017

References

{{Authority control Physics laboratories University and college laboratories in the United Kingdom Departments of Imperial College London Physics departments in the United Kingdom Imperial College Faculty of Natural Sciences Buildings and structures of Imperial College London University and college buildings completed in 1961 Buildings and structures in the City of Westminster