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17 Jun 2002
Peter Knight is the first European physicist to be elected president of the Optical Society of America. He tells Nadya Anscombe about his aims during his presidency and how he thinks the society could support optics in Europe.
From Opto & Laser Europe February 2002
Last year was a busy one for Peter Knight. Not only was he appointed head of one of the largest physics departments in the UK - at Imperial College in London - he also became the first non-American physicist ever to be elected president of the Optical Society of America.
Knight competed successfully against two other candidates in the Optical Society of America (OSA) elections. He will serve as vice-president this year, president elect in 2003 and president in 2004.
He believes that the OSA's European members will benefit from their society having a European president: "People often misunderstand the OSA - it is really an international society. My aim is to make sure that all of the activities of the OSA are permeated by an international spirit."
Knight made this attitude clear after last year's terrorist attacks in the US. "After
September 11th, the OSA board asked what we were doing in terms of national defence. I reminded the
board that the OSA is not a national society but an international one, and the question should have been:
'What can we do for safety globally?'" In support of
this stance, Knight points out that about one third of the society's 15 000 members are working outside of the
US and that its premier journal, Optics Letters, currently publishes more papers by European than
American authors. "Not many people realize that the OSA has more European members than the quantum
electronics and optics division of the European Physical Society (EPS) - a division of which I used to be
chairman," said Knight. For European physicists, belonging to such a large society as the OSA has its
advantages: for example, members receive discounts for its many events and journals. But although the OSA
organizes several successful meetings in the US, Knight admits that "there is an urgent need for a really
strong optics meeting in Europe". The conference on lasers and electro-optics (CLEO) is one of the
OSA's most successful US events, but attempts to recreate the formula - involving a technical conference and
a large exhibition - in Europe have failed. Although CLEO Europe started out as an annual stand-alone event,
it now takes place every two years alongside the Laser exhibition in Munich, Germany, and the conference is
much smaller than its US counterpart. Knight said: "The problem in Europe is that exhibition space is
very expensive. It is also difficult to compete with the excellent Laser show. All of the optics societies with
members in Europe should collaborate to organize a big optics meeting with a strong conference and
exhibition. A number of the smaller meetings could co-locate and charge a single registration fee." He
believes that networking is essential if the European optics industry is to compete globally and that the
community needs an annual event to network effectively. The SPIE has set up a European office in Cardiff,
UK, but Knight is undecided as to whether the OSA will follow suit. "Before setting up an office in Europe,
you have to be sure that the expense is worthwhile. You need to be able to do something from there that you
could not do from a US office. And today's technology means that the OSA can serve its members very well
from the US." The OSA and the SPIE had talked about a merger in the past, but OSA members voted
against the move for financial reasons. "The whole exercise created more heat than light," said Knight. "I was
unconvinced about a full assets merger." Although he believes that competition is healthy, he would
also like to see more collaboration taking place within the industry. "Sometimes the optics industry needs to
use one voice to get a single message out. We intend to push for a public voice for optics and we will be
working much harder with anyone who wants to work with us." And he believes that all of Europe's
optics societies perform a useful role, including the European Optical Society (EOS). "There is an equal need
for national, European and international activity. I see the OSA as an international umbrella organization that
could bring all of the societies together," he said. The EOS was spun out of the EPS during Knight's
period as chairman of its optics division. "They thought that they could create a safer and better-funded place
for optics in Europe, but that does not seem to have happened," said Knight. Funding is of major
concern to Knight, particularly in the UK. He is worried about what he sees as a decline in the number of
physics (and therefore optics) research projects that are receiving funding from the UK's Engineering and
Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). "In the late 1980s and early 1990s, funding was good -
we could plan ahead and we were in a better situation than most EU countries. Now funding in France and
Germany has picked up and they are spending more than we are," said Knight. "The proportion of physics
projects in the UK that successfully apply for funding today is only around 12%. That figure used to be more
like 30-40%." Knight's main worry, though, is not the amount but the type of funding that the physics projects
receive. "There is an urgent need for long-term funding in optics," he said. "We are always moaning about
not having enough money, but it is the ability to plan ahead in the long term that really matters. German
funding bodies provide higher levels of long-term funding, and look how successful their researchers
are." He wants to see more programs, rather than projects, receiving funding. "If more long-term
funding were allocated, it would be easier to balance out high-risk/high-return projects with a bit of
safety-first research," he said. Knight believes that with the right kind of funding, UK optics research could
return to the high standards it achieved in the 1980s and 1990s. In between writing grant applications,
performing his OSA duties and managing the department, Knight, together with his wife Chris, edits the
journals Contemporary Physics and Journal of Modern Optics. He also still manages to
squeeze in some research - he has published more than 350 papers on theoretical quantum optics and
quantum information. It seems that this year is going to be even busier for him than the last. OSA www.osa.org
Imperial College www.ic.ac.uk
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