Another Physics Department bites the Dust

The University of Reading announced to staff this week that it will no longer accept new students onto Physics single subject or joint degrees from 2007. This is the latest in a long chain of departmental closures at Reading, as well as the latest in a a long chain of closures of University Physics departments.

At Reading, they've closed, amongst others:

Postgraduate Research Institute in Sedimentology.
This department ran one of only two hydro-geology MScs in the UK. At a time of climate change, when flooding is one of the biggest challenges facing the UK environment, we closed down one of the principle sources of qualified scientists. The relevant government department has since directly funded the creation of a similar course elsewhere.

Music

Food and Microbial Sciences Unit
This unit brought in approx 5% of the University's research income and included one of the most highly cited researchers in the world.

Linguistics and Applied Language Studies

Various Modern Languages, reducing our degree-level language studies to German, French and Italian. We dropped such unimportant languages as Japanese.

Now Physics.