Samuel McKee is a biomedical scientist researching DNA repair in cancer and space science contexts at the University of Reading. He has a doctorate in history and philosophy of science on interwar physics from Manchester Metropolitan University where he has taught and published on the history and philosophy of physics and the space program. He is a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society and in 2024, whilst leading a team of students, had an experiment flown to the International Space Station. He has 9 university qualifications across the sciences and humanities and writes for several science outlets.

A Centenary Retrospective on the Debates on the Birth of the 'New Physics' The period of 1919-1929 is perhaps the most revolutionary decade in the history of science. After Sir Arthur Eddington proved Einstein's relativity to be correct with his famous photo of the solar eclipse from Principe Island off the coast of Africa, there was a rapid succession of advances in quantum physics, the birth of "Big Bang" cosmology, and the application of these to a host of previously unsolved issues in science. The aftermath led to the uncovering of the subatomic world in new detail. This led to two decades of intense debate and speculation about the meaning and consequences of these findings between some of the finest minds in the history of physics. Here, a century later, we revisit the debates and examine where and how they were so fruitful and what further lessons can be learned today.