In this episode of the Physics World Stories podcast you will hear from scientists and software engineers at the vanguard of developing free and open-source software for physics research. Guests talk about the role of open software in astronomical imaging, the search for dark matter, medical physics and other fields. Software also plays a big role in the wider open-science movement but there are ongoing debates around how to provide suitable recognition to software developers who have contributed to scientific breakthroughs.

Featuring the following guests:

• Kirstie Whitaker, director of the Tools, Practices and Systems research programme at the Alan Turing Institute in London
• Tim Smith, head of collaboration, devices and applications group at CERN
• Katie Bouman – computer scientist at Caltech, whose algorithms helped to transform data from the Event Horizon Telescope into the first ever image of a black hole
• Suchita Kulkarni, a particle physicist at the University of Graz, Austria
• Juanjo Bazán, an astrophysicist from the Center for Energy, Environmental and Technological Research in Madrid, Spain.

Find out more by reading “Standing on the shoulders of programmers: the power of free and open-source software“, originally published in the September issue of Physics World.