Wolfendale and other members of Durham Physics, assist the Davis Group in South Dakota. They work on detecting neutrino emissions from the sun. The experiment ran until 1994, and eventually resulted in a Nobel Prize for Ray Davis in 2002.
The university struggled with funding for large amounts of this decade as many new universities had been built nationwide, spreading the government grants thinly across the country. The physics department struggled to make new appointments.
By this year, there are 1106 undergraduate science students (not including Mathematics or Geography) and 121 teaching staff.
Wolfendale becomes head of department.
Beginning in 1975 the Department began hosting a series of major public lectures by eminent invited speakers. The Rochester lecture series, named in honour of George Rochester, began with a talk by Professor J. M. Ziman on the topic 'Is Physics Finished?' At the time, he worked in the HH Physics Laboratory in the University of Bristol.
You can find information about all the major lectures the department hosts on the Major Lecture Series website, which videos of previous lectures and details of forthcoming events, plus the Saturday Morning Science programme which sees some of the University’s top experts explore their specialist subjects across the scientific spectrum in public talks aimed at high school students and adults alike.
In this video, Prof. Brian Tanner explains what the department was like when he joined it in 1973
Prof. Brian Tanner talks about the growth of research in the department from the 1970s onward
S.M. Scarrot was the first to return to astrophysics in Durham, moving from his field of nuclear research, studying the polarization of starlight. Wolfendale encouraged R. Fong to begin 'The Cosmology Group' moving from his own research in Fundamental Quantum Theory. R.S. Ellis became its first junior researcher.
The group published a long series of papers on the significance of galaxy clustering. The following year, in 1977, another new initiative began with J.M. Breare transferring from nuclear instrumentation to the design of optical instruments for giant telescopes.
A new Professor of Astronomy is appointed for the first time since 1911, and the Centre for Particle Theory is established.
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