The World Conference on Physics and Sustainable Development drew more than 300 physicists from 70 or so countries to Durban, South Africa, from 31 October through 2 November.
The conference was intended “to bring the physics community together and have it make a commitment to working collectively on the problems of sustainability,” says Judy Franz, executive director of the American Physical Society and secretary general of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. The conference’s four leading sponsors were IUPAP, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), and the South African Institute of Physics.
The crux of the conference was the drafting of proposals for ways physicists in industrialized countries can work with those in developing countries in four areas: economic development, energy and environment, education, and health. “Our first measure of success,” says Amy Flatten, APS’s...
