Profile
Philip Moriarty
My CV
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Education:
1985 — Leaving Cert, St. Macartan’s College, Monaghan, Ireland 1985 – 1990 Dublin City University
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Qualifications:
BSc in Applied Physics; PhD in surface physics
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Work History:
University of Nottingham
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Current Job:
Professor of Physics
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About Me:
Physicist. Father of three (Niamh (12), Saoirse (10), and Fiachra (7)). Heavy metal fan. Not *that* Professor Moriarty.
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Fáilte. My name is Philip Moriarty and I’m a professor of physics at the University of Nottingham, a father of three (Niamh (12), Saoirse (10), and Fiachra (7)), and a Rushphile. I’m also Undergraduate Admissions Tutor for the School of Physics & Astronomy — along with my colleagues in the admissions team, I consider applications to study physics at Nottingham.
Let’s deal with the pachyderm in the playpen right now so we get it out of the way and can relax. Yes, I’m saddled with the Prof. Moriarty moniker. But I’ve never been that enamoured of the binomial theorem. And I’m fairly certain that I’ve kept those hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind under control over the years.
Fairly certain.
My UoN profile page — which is permanently in need of an update — is here. I work with a fantastic bunch of researchers in the Nanoscience Group and we spend our days imaging, interrogating and influencing the basic building blocks of matter — single atoms and molecules — using scanning probe microscopes. I also collaborate with the exceptionally talented and remarkably prolific Brady Haran for the Sixty Symbols YouTube channel (and occasionally for Numberphile, and even more occasionally, for Periodic Videos).
I love listening to, playing, and recording music, particularly of the heavy metal variety (and its myriad sub-genres). Although I’m a guitarist my instrument of choice at the moment is Aerodrums (and I wax lyrical about the wonders of Aerodrums at length in this video).
The relationship between music, maths, and physics fascinates me — I’m in the middle of writing a book titled “When the uncertainty principle goes up to 11…” about the links between quantum physics and heavy metal. And a number of years back, I had a great deal of fun working with a YouTuber called Dave Brown (boyinaband) on this mapping of a fundamental constant in nature to riffs, rhythms, and lyrics.
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We manipulate the atomic and molecular building blocks of matter, one at a time. Here are a couple of Sixty Symbols videos we did with Brady Haran, describing our group’s research at Nottingham.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ehw8PTA4QkE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBmBMmuUBMk
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My Typical Day:
There is no typical day.
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The great thing about being an academic is that there isn’t a typical day. My job spans research, teaching and lecturing, public engagement events like Pint Of Science and Skeptics In The Pub, travel, visiting schools, meeting with applicants for our physics degree courses, writing articles for journals, magazines, and newspapers, making videos, developing new experiments and demonstrations.
Oh, and having fun.
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Too. Much. Coffee.
What did you want to be after you left school?
A musician or a sound engineer. Or both.
What don't you like about your current job?
That universities are becoming too corporate and are over-run by silly marketing campaigns.
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