The Olympiad at Leicester

The University and City of Leicester are the ideal venue for the last International Physics Olympiad of this millennium. The University boasts a world-class Physics Department with a reputation for outstanding research that stretches around the globe. The department is also one of Britain's leading institutes of further education in physics; it regularly scores highly in quality assessments, achieving the impressive mark of 23 out of 24 in March 1999.

Leicester is also fast becoming the "Space Centre" for the UK. One of the largest space research laboratories in Europe was built at the University in 1998, that builds upon the excellent space science carried out since 1960 at the Department of Physics. The city is to be the location for the National Space Science Centre (NSSC), one of the UK's landmark millennium projects. Due for completion in 2001, this will house exhibitions relating to man's exploration and exploitation of space and a planetarium. The NSSC will also include the Challenger Learning Center (CLC), which promotes science and technology learning through the simulation of space missions. The CLC recently opened and Olympiad delegates will all have the chance to visit and use the CLC.

There is a great deal to see and do in Leicester, a city with a rich past, a lively present and great future. The city rests in the middle of the rolling green hills of Leicestershire, and is well connected by road and rail to most of the major cities and attractions in the rest of Great Britain.

Find out more about this exciting city in the heart of England by browsing around the sites reached through the buttons to the left. We hope you will come to agree that Leicester will be a great place for our future guests to visit next July.