Physics at Leicester: light years from its humble beginnings
Credit: Thomas-Photos
Today in 2025, there are ten working instruments in space that scientists in the University of Leicester School of Physics and Astronomy helped to build. It’s a far cry from the world of 1925, when a mere ten students walked through Leicester’s doors to become its first physics undergraduates. Established a few short years after what was then Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland University College opened in 1921, the department began with a single lecturer and long before any human-made object left this planet.
100 years on and the school now welcomes 650 students, with 45 academic and over 100 research, administrative and technical staff. Along the way, it has built a world-class reputation in space science, planetary science, astrophysics and Earth observation with world-changing discoveries to its name.
Gathering momentum
Numbers of students grew steadily in the pre-World War 2 years, doubling by 1930 and reaching a total of 47 by the 1942/43 academic year. Space would likely have formed little of their studies, and it would be nearly forty years from 1925 before the space research group would be established.
Notable individuals to have a University of Leicester physics degree to their name include astronomers and authors Heather Couper and Nigel Henbest, who met as undergraduates in the early 1970s; astronaut Jeff Hoffman, who conducted post graduate research at Leicester and flew five Space Shuttle missions after returning to and building a career in the USA; and the novelist and chemist , who received his MSc in Physics from Leicester, albeit under the auspices of the University of London.
Reaching for the sky(lark)
Research in the Physics Department at Leicester began with gas physics, branching out into other fields such as atmospheric physics and thin films, then rocket physics in the 1960s. The appointment of Dr Ken Pounds in 1960, fresh from completing his PhD at University College London, helped establish the space research group with the aim of specialising in the study of solar X-rays. Dr Pounds, later Professor, began and led the department’s long involvement with sounding rockets such as Skylark that continued until the end of the 1970s. These rockets carried scientific instruments to altitudes of 150-175km before falling back to Earth and became the mainstay of x-ray astronomy research until satellite missions took over
The first Leicester-built instrument in space was launched aboard a Skylark rocket from Woomera in 1961. One of fewer than ten surviving Skylarks now stands proudly in the foyer of the Physics Building (pictured left), built in 1961/62 when the department moved in. The following year solar X-ray detectors developed at the University were carried into space in Ariel 1, the first ever British satellite.
A succession of subsequent space missions with University of Leicester involvement means that there has been at least one piece of Leicester-built equipment operating in space every year since 1967. By the late 1970s, Leicester’s scientists were a leading force in X-ray astronomy, leading to roles in major missions such as EXOSAT, Chandra and XMM-Newton. The legacy of that early work is still part of the department today, with expertise in X-ray optics from Leicester contributing to two new missions launched in the past year: the Space Variable Objects Monitor (SVOM) and Einstein Probe.
Supermassive achievements
The department’s research interests broadened with the establishment of the Space Research Centre in 1998 and previous developments in 1983 and 1995, see below, and today covers astrophysics, exoplanets, planetary science, Earth observation and rapidly increasing space engineering. It is built upon a legacy of world-changing discoveries that continues to this day, including: the Ariel 5 satellite’s biggest discovery, an 'outburst' in a source discovered by the Leicester team in the 1970s, became one of the best confirmed black hole systems, and the nearest known for decades. Most of the electromagnetic spectrum is covered in the department’s work, with science taking us all the way from the Earth through the Solar System to stars, galaxies and the edge of the Universe.
Professor Ken Pounds played a leading role in establishing the existence of powerful ionised winds launched from supermassive black holes at the centre of many external galaxies.
In 1993 Earth Observation research started at Leicester with the appointment of Professor David Llewellyn-Jones and lecturers in Physics, Chemistry and Geography. This has now expanded into a research group in Physics and Astronomy of six academics led by Dr Josh Vande Hey with Professor John Remedios directing the , a NERC research institute headquartered at the University’s Space Park Leicester with 130 staff across the UK. That step in 1993 led to the first long-term, physics-based, consistent satellite sea surface temperature record subsequently first included in the IPCC global climate report of 2013. The original Leicester-led Along Track Scanning Radiometers for research from space have since become the Sentinel-3 operational instruments providing temperature every day to the world and the group now specialises in land surface temperature and aerosols as Essential Climate Variables, air quality and fires. Latest research has included greenhouse gas emissions from wetlands, coal mines, landfills and the Nordstream pipeline explosions. Just this year, Leicester is supporting three new Earth satellites: the ESA Biomass mission on forests, the CNES-UKSA Microcarb satellite to measure carbon dioxide and the Eumetsat-Meteosat sounders of atmospheric gases.
In 1995 low level research started in astrobiology and surface based planetary science which in 1997 led to researchers and technical staff from Leicester being involved in the Beagle 2 Mars lander mission (launched in 2003), with Professor Mark Sims serving as Beagle 2 Mission Manager. Presumed lost when communication could not be established after landing on Christmas Day 2003, it was rediscovered in late 2014 on the surface of Mars (and announced in January 2015) by members of the Beagle 2 team, including Leicester scientists, and NASA. It had landed safely but failed during deployment.
Recent planetary research includes involvement by Leicester space scientists in NASA’s Juno and ESA’s JUICE missions to Jupiter, and the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury. They have been using the James Webb Space Telescope, another mission that benefitted from Leicester expertise, to give us new views of our distant neighbours Saturn, Neptune and, just this week, Jupiter’s aurora. Leicester’s extensive work on Jupiter’s aurora has even been represented on a stamp! The School also houses a large research team studying Gamma-Ray Bursts, the most powerful explosive transients in the Universe, exploiting its ongoing role in the hugely successful Swift mission.
The ESA Smile mission (a joint mission between Europe and China) due to launch in 2026 will see x-ray instrumentation from Leicester being used to investigate the interaction between the solar wind and the Earth’s magnetosphere. The planetary science groups work builds heavily on the Space Plasma research which was the other mainstay of Space related research during the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. The research includes development with Spain of the Raman spectrometer scheduled to fly on the ESA Rosalind Franklin Mars rover in 2028, which may detect signs of past life on Mars from deep drilled samples.
Onwards and upwards
This 60-year plus legacy in space research led to the establishment of Space Park Leicester (pictured left), officially opened in March 2022, a pioneering £100 million science and innovation hub uniquely dedicated to – and specifically designed for – space-related companies and researchers to interact and collaborate. Neighbouring the National Space Centre, a project that the department’s expertise also played a key role in, Space Park Leicester is already the second largest campus-based cluster with a dedicated space focus in the UK and generated an estimated £89m for the economy in its first year.
Those first ten students in 1921 might never have imagined that their humble department would not only put the University of Leicester on the map, but also send it to some of the furthest reaches of our solar system. As today’s students take a seat at their next lecture, the Centenary of the School of Physics and Astronomy might give them opportunity to reflect on those pioneering students, studying their subject at an ambitious young university for the very first time.
With acknowledgements to Professor Ken Pounds and Professor Mark Sims from the School of Physics and Astronomy.
All images are credit to University of Leicester Archives & Special Collections, except 'Leicester University College needs £20,000 for Physics and Chemistry' (credit: Leicester Mercury) and Space Park Leicester (credit: Martine Hamilton Knight).