Science is Vital has got its official website and a bunch of celebrity supporters, including Sir Patrick Moore and the Nobel laureate Sir Paul Nurse. More than 30,700 have signed the Petition to be delivered to Downing Street this coming Thursday. (You still have a few hours to sign it!) Who knows, this time it may work. Or may mot. I just read on Exquisite Life blog that
To pay for a Conservative—Liberal deal on student fees, ministers are considering the possibility of a second wave of extra cuts to science budgets after the Comprehensive Spending Review.
And speaking of Nobels: isn’t it good news that four of this year’s Nobel crop (Robert G. Edwards, Andre Geim, Konstantin Novoselov and Christopher Pissarides) are based in Britain? That undoubtedly will help the argument. As Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society (quoted here) put it,
Just this week two Russian scientists <Geim and Novoselov>, working in the UK for the last ten years, won Nobel Prizes. Would they have chosen the UK today, when cuts are threatened?
On the other hand, and quite in contrast to last year, there were no women Nobel prize winners this time. Shame.
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