The Institute of Physics Faraday Medal

Today was a very special day. We celebrated one of our most loved professors, Roy Sambles (FRS) who was awarded the Institute of Physics Faraday Medal last night 'for his pioneering research in experimental condensed matter physics'. For more info, check out the IOP page about it.

You may have caught the event live on the web stream (although I doubt it!): Brian Cox's speech!

I was so torn as to whether to use his face or an image of the medal itself. In the end, I decided to go for the medal, since I think he might prefer that.

We weren't convinced that the medal was made of 100% gold, but Roy assured us that it wasn't foil-covered chocolate. His name is engraved around the edge.

Edit to add: I felt like I ought to add some more personal observations from today. Roy said that the last 40 years working here in Exeter had "evaporated". He was visibly disquieted at how rapidly his career has flown past. I hope we can all take a lesson from this - stop and smell the roses every once in a while. It doesn't matter if you become a Fellow of the Royal Society, time flies by for all of us regardless of how productive we've been.