The Blackett Laboratory is part of the Imperial College Faculty of Natural Sciences and has housed the Department of Physics at

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

since its completion in 1961. Named after experimental physicist Patrick Blackett who established a laboratory at the college, the building is located on the corner of Prince Consort Road and Queen's Gate,

Kensington Kensington is an area of London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, around west of Central London. The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up by Kensingt ...

. The department ranks 12th on QS's 2025 world university rankings.

History

The Department of Physics at Imperial College dates back to the physics department of the Normal School of Science, later the Royal College of Science. As part of the formation of Imperial, the Royal College was moved into a new building at South Kensington in 1906, which also housed the Chemistry Department. From 1906 to 1932 the head of the Physics Department was Prof. H. L. Callender, famous for his work on the properties of steam. G P Thomson (son of J J Thomson) replaced Callender in 1932, and worked in part on nuclear physics and atomic weaponry. He was followed P. M. S. Blackett as head in around 1953, with the construction of the new Physics building starting at about the same time. Blackett refocused efforts from low-energy physics to high-energy nuclear physics, and under him research started into

cosmic ray Cosmic rays or astroparticles are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the ...

s and the use of

bubble chamber A bubble chamber is a vessel filled with a superheated transparent liquid (most often liquid hydrogen) used to detect electrically charged particles moving through it. It was invented in 1952 by Donald A. Glaser, for which he was awarded th ...

s, with the first liquid hydrogen bubble chamber in Western Europe being constructed at the department. Work on satellite instrumentation resulted in departmentally designed equipment ending up on NASA satellites in 1962. Physics continued in the new “old” RCS building until the new Physics building was finished in 1961, which subsequently became known as the Blackett Laboratory.Department History
Accessed 28 January 2017 In 2019, it was announced that the laboratory would be constructing a magnetometer instrument for the

European Space Agency The European Space Agency (ESA) is a 23-member International organization, international organization devoted to space exploration. With its headquarters in Paris and a staff of around 2,547 people globally as of 2023, ESA was founded in 1975 ...

Solar Orbiter in a mission to study the

Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

. The satellite launched on an

Atlas V Atlas V is an expendable launch system and the fifth major version in the Atlas (rocket family), Atlas launch vehicle family. It was developed by Lockheed Martin and has been operated by United Launch Alliance (ULA) since 2006. Primarily used to ...

from the Cape Canaveral AFS,

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on the 9 February, 2020. In November 2019, a team of Imperial physicists was chosen to design parts of the

Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is a neutrino experiment under construction, with a near detector at Fermilab and a far detector at the Sanford Underground Research Facility that will observe neutrinos produced at Fermilab. An int ...

, which is to be a long baseline accelerator

neutrino A neutrino ( ; denoted by the Greek letter ) is an elementary particle that interacts via the weak interaction and gravity. The neutrino is so named because it is electrically neutral and because its rest mass is so small ('' -ino'') that i ...

experiment in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

Academics

Study

Undergraduate

The department offers three year BSc and four year undergraduate

MSci MSCI Inc. (formerly Morgan Stanley Capital International) is an American finance company headquartered in New York City. MSCI is a global provider of equity, fixed income, real estate indices, multi-asset portfolio analysis tools, ESG and ...

courses. The department has connections with universities in Europe, allowing undergraduate master's students to study-abroad during their course. All students graduating with an undergraduate degree from the department are also awarded the Associateship of the Royal College of Science, ARCS. This degree is professionally accredited by the

Institute of Physics The Institute of Physics (IOP) is a UK-based not-for-profit learned society and professional body that works to advance physics education, physics research, research and applied physics, application. It was founded in 1874 and has a worldwide ...

. Holders of accredited degrees can follow a route to Institute Membership and the CPhys professional qualification.

Postgraduate

Taught postgraduate courses last for one year leading to a MSc, with research degrees leading to either a MRes or

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

. All students graduating with any of the postgraduate degrees (MSc, MRes, PhD) are also awarded the Diploma of Imperial College, DIC. There are also a number of short-courses for practising engineers. Blackett Laboratory Entrance Hall from stairs

Blackett Laboratory Entrance Hall from stairs

Rankings

The college ranks 9th on the

Times Higher Education ''Times Higher Education'' (''THE''), formerly ''The Times Higher Education Supplement'' (''The THES''), is a British magazine reporting specifically on news and issues related to higher education. Ownership TPG Capital acquired TSL Education ...

natural sciences subjects rankings, and the department in particular ranks 12th in the world, and 3rd in the UK after

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

and

Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...

, on the

QS World University Rankings The ''QS World University Rankings'' is a portfolio of comparative college and university rankings compiled by Quacquarelli Symonds, a higher education analytics firm. Its first and earliest edition was published in collaboration with '' Times ...

. Domestically, the department ranks 6th in the

Complete University Guide Three national rankings of universities in the United Kingdom are published annually by the ''Complete University Guide'' and ''The Guardian'', as well as a collaborative list by ''The Times'' and ''The Sunday Times''. Rankings have also been pro ...

's 2021 physics rankings. Blackett Laboratory from the Main Walkway

People

The laboratory has connections to many physicists who had studied or taught at the department: * Sir Peter Knight * Sir John Pendry * Sir Tom Kibble * Sir Tejinder Singh Virdee * Sir Steven Cowley * Edward Hinds *

Jenny Nelson Jenny Nelson is Professor of Physics in the Blackett Laboratory and Head of the Climate change mitigation team at the Grantham Institute - Climate Change and Environment at Imperial College London. Education Nelson was educated at the Univ ...

* Fay Dowker * Jess Wade * Michele Dougherty * Joanna Haigh * Matt Taylor *

Abdus Salam Mohammad Abdus Salam Salam adopted the forename "Mohammad" in 1974 in response to the anti-Ahmadiyya decrees in Pakistan, similarly he grew his beard. (; ; 29 January 192621 November 1996) was a Pakistani theoretical physicist. He shared the 1 ...

* Libby Jackson of the

UK Space Agency The United Kingdom Space Agency (UKSA) is an executive agency of the Government of the United Kingdom, responsible for the United Kingdom's British space programme, civil space programme. It was established on 1 April 2010 to replace the Britis ...

* Jonathan Pritchard (2017 of the Fowler Award for Astronomy)news at imperial.ac.uk/physics
Accessed 28 January 2017

References

{{Authority control Physics laboratories University and college laboratories in the United Kingdom Departments of Imperial College London Physics departments in the United Kingdom Imperial College Faculty of Natural Sciences Buildings and structures of Imperial College London University and college buildings completed in 1961 Buildings and structures in the City of Westminster