Science & Music – Paul Steadman – Tuesday 18th February
Ranging from the popular music of Ed Sheeran or Dua Lipa through to Jazz, flamenco to the more classical music of Debussy or Beethoven it is obvious that most people will like some form of music. What is less obvious are the links between music and science and what separates music from other forms of sound or noise. With the help of some demonstrations I will attempt to explain these links by examining sound waves, the structure of musical instruments and the construction of musical scales and why this caused so much controversy for hundreds of years.
Paul Steadman
Paul Steadman is an instrument scientist at Oxfordshire’s Diamond Light Source. He studied at the University of Leicester, obtaining his first degree and PhD there. In 1998 he worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Grenoble where he studied surface crystallography of magnetic thin films. In 2003 he worked on a project to study the magnetic and structural disorder in magnetic thin films using mainly X-ray and neutron scattering techniques. He built and now leads one of the instruments which is dedicated to the study of magnetism.
Whilst Paul’s main area of expertise are in X-rays and magnetism he is also a very keen musician and has, for a number of years, had a big interest in trying to understand the connection science and music.