Behind the cover: June 2022

Each month, Physics Today editors explore the research and design choices that inspired the latest cover of the magazine.

Physics Today‘s cover for the June 2022 issue highlights my story in Issues & Events that explores how the war in Ukraine is affecting science and scientists. The idea for the story arose out of conversations about other topics entirely—in interviewing a physicist in the UK about Brexit, for example, I learned about difficulties he and his colleagues were having with collaborations in Russia.

I started to look into how such collaborations were faring during the war. That led to exploring science and scientists in Ukraine. Many scientists were focused on survival or had seen their workplaces destroyed. For some, though, doing science was a welcome distraction from the war.

I heard many more stories than I could include in my news feature. A couple especially stand out: A graduate student from Russia who happened to be working temporarily in a lab in Germany when Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February told me he was torn between transferring his PhD work to a German institute and returning home to complete his studies in Russia. A postdoc was doing experiments at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, outside Moscow, when the war started. His US-based group leader described spending hours on the phone with airlines arranging for the postdoc to leave Russia. He eventually succeeded, at astronomical cost. Meanwhile, a couple hundred thousand dollars’ worth of the researchers’ US-owned equipment remains stranded in Dubna, and nobody knows how or when it may be recovered.

The group leader said he doesn’t know how to feel about continued collaboration with his Russian colleagues. That uncertainty reflects the difficult choice that many scientists are grappling with: Should they draw back from collaborations to condemn the war? Or keep lines of communication open? Many worry that Russian science will become increasingly isolated. For Ukraine, the worry is different: how to rebuild science when peace returns.

Physics Today‘s editor-in-chief suggested that the June cover illustrate destruction in Ukraine. A physicist sent me several photos of damaged physics buildings in Kharkiv, but, taken with a phone, their resolution was not high enough for a cover. The magazine’s art director, Donna Padian, came to the rescue. Searching for scenes of destruction was “not a pleasant task,” she says. “It’s hard to find compositional beauty in disaster.” She chose a photo of the remains of a school in Kharkiv. Donna went with League Gothic and Tandelle typefaces for a straightforward, newsy look. For emphasis, she used the colors of Ukraine’s flag.