Last week in Cambridge, the cosmological model of Robert Grosseteste, based on a fundamental coupling of light and matter, was presented as a poster at the 1st International Conference on the History of Physics, organized by the Institute of Physics at Cambridge, Sept 4-5th, 2014. As the main focus of the conference was “Electromagnetism: the Road to Power”, most of the papers were concerned with the history of the development of physics in the 18th and 19th centuries. However, there were a few papers in the poster session concerned with earlier work and the Ordered Universe poster attracted detailed attention from a number of discerning delegates. Brian Tanner, who presented the poster, was surprised to find that all the reprints that he had taken had been picked up. One delegate was even sufficiently interested to read our papers overnight…
The Ordered Universe poster took a very different approach to its material than most of the conference speakers, who tended to examine chronological sequences, and motivations and influences behind developments in physics. However, its historically informed and physics-based format gave a clear message. As one delegate remarked, “It is surprising that this idea of cosmic creation can be formulated in mathematics.”