Its drab orange, black and white cover is largely filled with advertisements for obscure scientific apparatus. Its stodgy layout is interrupted by grey numerical tables, grainy photographs and the jagged lines of esoteric graphs. Its language is a polysyllabic jargon that is often incomprehensible to all but a few specialists. Yet despite such shortcomings, London's weekly Nature magazine has reigned for almost a century as the world's foremost scientific journal.
In an age of scientific revolution, the magazine might be expected to attempt some innovations. But last week, as he prepared to take over the chair left vacant by the death...