About

Physics at the University of Aberdeen has a long and storied history dating back to the foundation of the University in 1495.

The department is mostly based on the third floor of the Meston Building on the Old Aberdeen campus. Meston also houses Computing Science and Chemistry from the School of Natural and Computing Sciences, and the School of Geosciences. Some staff have their offices within the Institute for Mathematics in the Fraser Noble Building. Some staff have links with departments based on the University's Foresterhill campus, so they regularly spend time there as well.

Our facilities include observatories and research and teaching laboratories, including computer laboratories.

The Department of Physics has existed in its current form since the early 1990s. However, the teaching of Physics (or "Natural Philosophy", as it was known for most of our history) at the University of Aberdeen and its predecessor institutions goes all the way back to the original founding of King's College in 1495. 

Our most illustrious staff include James Clerk Maxwell, widely regarded as one of the greatest scientists of all time due to his revolutionary work on the theory of electricity and magnetism, as well as optics and numerous other fields, RV Jones, who was Assistant Director of Intelligence (Science) in the UK Air Ministry during World War II, and GP Thomson, who won the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physics for his "gold foil" electron diffraction experiment. One other Nobel Prize winner and several Fellows of the Royal Society have been associated with Physics at Aberdeen.