Felix Arnold Edward Pirani (2 February 1928 – 31 December 2015) was a British theoretical physicist, and professor at King's College London, specialising in gravitational physics and general relativity.
[13][14][15] In 1972 Pirani, Jürgen Ehlers and Alfred Schild showed that the space-time geometry of general relativity can be constructed from simple measuring processes with light beams and free-falling particles.
[16] In 1960 Pirani revised the general audience book "The ABC of Relativity", originally written by Bertrand Russell in 1925.
[2][10] [20] Along with DNA pioneer Maurice Wilkins, who was also at King's, Pirani was involved in the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science.
[11] Pirani's efforts were based on his view that the public belief that "science will solve the world's problems" is a delusion because funding for research comes from the top levels of the social hierarchy, which controls the direction of scientific progress for its own purposes.