Getting out of the attic

by Paul Williams

Creativity seems to be unleashed by a change of scenery and a break from routine. For example, Alexander Graham Bell's crucial insight that led to the invention of the telephone in the 1870s came, not while tinkering obsessively in his attic in the middle of the night, but while "slouched on a wicker chair" after going for a walk "far from the bustle of Boston", according to Charlotte Gray's biography.

It is for this reason that I am looking forward to spending the next four months as a Visiting Fellow at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge. I will be participating in a programme on Mathematical and Statistical Approaches to Climate Modelling and Prediction. I am personally interested in how small-scale features, such as the atmospheric gravity waves shown in the picture below, should be represented in climate models. A promising method seems to be to include a stochastic (i.e. random) component in the representation. I am looking forward to leaving my own "attic" for a few months, to pursue these ideas with other researchers in Cambridge.