A physics tour of Beijing

Dusk falls on Beijing.

By Hamish Johnston in Beijing 

It’s a lovely warm evening here in Beijing. I have just arrived for an action-packed visit in which I will have a chance to meet some of China’s top physicists and science policy makers.

Over the next few days I’m looking forward to meeting people at the Chinese Physical Society (CPS),  the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MOST), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and more.

I am also very lucky to be invited to spend a morning at the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences as a guest of Zhong Fang’s condensed-matter theory group. The team’s work on Weyl fermions was one of the Physics World Top Ten Breakthroughs of 2015, and I’m really looking working to learning more about these curious quasiparticles.

Later this week I will also be at the Fall Meeting of the CPS here in Beijing. If you see me at the meeting, please say hello.

I’m excited to be here in China because the country has very rapidly become a global powerhouse in physics. There is much more about the rise and rise of physics in China in this brand new Physics World Special Report: China. It contains fascinating insights into how physics is done in China today and what the future could hold for Chinese and international physicists.