Archive for the Biographical Category

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Sussex University Memories – MAPS in 1989

Posted in Biographical with tags , , on June 24, 2015 by telescoper

I was at a meeting this afternoon doing some planning for a nice event coming up next month – of which more anon – when I was reminded of this photograph, taken one sunny day on the University of Sussex campus way back in 1989. It shows staff of the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences which was MAPS, acronymically speaking, in those days; now it is MPS. The picture is taken from a very interesting website of the history of physics at Sussex.

800px-MAPS_photo_1989_colour

I was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Astronomy Centre in those days. I wonder who can spot me in the picture?

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My PhD Tree

Posted in Biographical, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on June 23, 2015 by telescoper

Last week I discovered that somebody has kindly constructed my PhD Tree. I later discovered that similar things have been constructed for quite a few other scientists of my acquaintance. Perhaps even yours?

Anyway, here is my academic lineage. As you can see, I have some distinguished ancestors. In particular, my great-grandfather (academically speaking) was Paul Dirac…

PhD Tree

Incidentally, you might like to see Dirac’s hand-written notes for his PhD Thesis, which you can find here. It dates from 1926. As far as I am aware this is the first PhD thesis ever written on the subject of Quantum Mechanics. It’s also worth mentioning the tremendous contribution to British science made by R.H. Fowler. Fifteen Fellows of the Royal Society and three Nobel Laureates (Chandrasekhar, Dirac, and Mott) were supervised by Fowler in Cambridge between 1922 and 1939.

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Admissions to Degrees

Posted in Biographical with tags , , on June 20, 2015 by telescoper

My trip to Cambridge earlier this week along with talk of other anniversaries made me a bit nostalgic this morning so I dug out the papers I kept about my own graduation.

image

It turns out I graduated on Saturday 22nd June 1985. You can see my name on the list of graduands at the top left of this montage.

I don’t remember much about the actual ceremony nor the rest of the day, perhaps because I was hungover from the night before..

On the right you see details of the Graduation Dinner held on Friday 21st June. When that ended, a large crowd went to the Pickerel where I remember singing all the verses of the Blaydon Races although I don’t remember why..

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Network Launch

Posted in Biographical, LGBTQ+ with tags , on June 19, 2015 by telescoper

As promised, last night saw the launch of the new Sussex University staff LGBT network. I was quite nervous ahead of the event, unsure of how it would go.

LGBT_staff

In the end most of the people who said they would come did so,  25 people or thereabouts. The mailing list is over 50, but this is a busy time of year so there were quite a few who couldn’t come last night. In fact if there had been many more people it might have made it more difficult for people to have their opinions heard.

At least most of the food and drink was consumed…

nibbles

Anyway, we had a nice discussion of the things we might do and a few people stepped up to volunteer their time to help organize various events. Now for some serious work over the summer to get things really moving and plan a programme for next academic year…

 

 

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Back to Brighton Beach

Posted in Biographical, Brighton with tags , , on June 18, 2015 by telescoper

Well, back from Cambridge to Brighton for a very busy working day at the University of Sussex during which I probably won’t have time to post, so I thought I’d just share a picture.This was the view from the seafront as I walked to the bus stop on my way to work this morning…
Brighton_Beach

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A Cambridge Guest

Posted in Beards, Biographical with tags on June 16, 2015 by telescoper

So here I am in a palatial guest room in Christ’s College, Cambridge.  I’m here because I am one of the (two) External Examiners for Physics. I spent yesterday afternoon at the Cavendish Laboratory preparing for today’s Part 2 Examination Board; tomorrow we have Part 3. The role of the External Examiner is basically to oversee the whole process including the classification of the honours degrees, to try as far as possible that candidates are treated fairly, and to ensure that academic standards are upheld.

Last night there were long queues of students here and there, all dolled up in their finest. It being June, of course, it is time for May Week (which, obviously, lasts a fortnight) and the inevitable May Balls. There were fireworks all over the city last night as things kicked off in a number of locations. My own evening was spent in more modest but in its own way very agreeable style, with an excellent curry up Castle Hill and a pint in the Pickerel.

Obviously I can’t blog about the actual business of the Exam Board. In fact I can’t blog about very much at all as  a college breakfast beckons. I will however just note that it does feel a little spooky being here as a guest at this time of year for this specific reason.

Exactly 30 years ago, I was a Finalist at Cambridge enjoying all the end-of-year activities and waiting for my own degree result for Part 2 Physics. Now I am on the other side of the fence in a way I could never have imagined back in 1985. It’s a strange kind of cyclic universe sometimes.

Anyway, must get on. Long day ahead. Need that Full English.

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Pass List Party

Posted in Biographical, Education with tags , , on June 12, 2015 by telescoper

Well, just as it happened last year the pass lists for students in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Sussex went up at noon today. Students and staff started to gather a bit in advance and we also made a few preparations for the celebration with bunting to welcome people into Pevensey 2…

pass_list party

..as well as food and refreshments indoors:

Pass_list_part 2

We had toyed with the idea of having a barbecue, but reckoned that was taking too much of a chance with the weather. Of course it turned out fine.

When the results were wheeled out there was an immediate scrum accompanied by plentiful popping of Prosecco corks.

pass _list_party 3

I made a short speech to congratulate all our students on their success and then handed over to the Head of Department for Physics & Astronomy, Prof. Claudia Eberlein, to announce the prize winners. I had to leave at 12.30 to attend the University Senate which always takes place on the last day of term. When I came back the party was still going on, and there was even a little bit of booze left. There had been one or two glitches, including me signing one of the lists in the wrong place necessitating the printing of another copy and also some of the progressing students were accidentally omitted from one of them. That latter event caused a bit of consternation but was all remedied quickly.

We had another excellent set of results this year so the students can be justifiably proud of their achievements. I’d like to take this opportunity to congratulate them again and I look forward to presenting the graduands for their degrees at the Brighton Dome in a month or so.

 

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Six key trends in contemporary statistics that really could revolutionise astronomical data analysis …

Posted in Biographical, The Universe and Stuff with tags on June 11, 2015 by telescoper

I’ve just come across this very interesting astrostatistics site, and I thought I’d reblog a piece from it. In fact I did make a very crude attempt back in the 90s to do something very like the SPDE analysis described here, but it came to nothing and I dropped the idea. Now it seems that there’s been a great deal of more recent activity in this area which I knew nothing about so it might be worth reviving interest in it.

Now. Where did I put those notes?

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An “Enfys” for Sussex…

Posted in Biographical, LGBTQ+ with tags , , , on June 9, 2015 by telescoper

As Head of School for Mathematical and Physical Sciences I get to do all kinds of jobs across the University to do with all kinds of matters, academic and non-academic alike. In the course of one of these – chairing the University’s Human Resources Committee – it occurred to me that it was very strange that it was a bit strange that a University (Sussex) so close to a famously gay-friendly city (Brighton) didn’t have any real forum for LGBT staff to share information, to support each other, and to run social, cultural or other events. It also seemed strange to me that the University of Sussex was not part of the Stonewall Diversity Champions scheme. Even worse, there is no official University staff representation at Brighton’s annual Pride celebrations, though the Student LGBTQ society has

My former institution, Cardiff University, not only has a thriving staff network (called Enfys, the Welsh word for “Rainbow”) and belongs to the Stonewall scheme, it also ranks 24th in the top 100 Equality Index of all UK employers.

Anyway, it was definitely with Enfys in mind that I suggested setting up a similar network here on the Sussex campus, open to all staff (not just academics). I wasn’t sure whether there would be any enthusiasm for it, but the senior management of the University gave me their backing to try.

And so it came to pass that we announced that a network was being set up, and there would be a kind of “launch party” on 18th June to plan what sort of things we would do. I had no idea how many people would be interested and was quite prepared for the idea to bomb completely. However, just a couple of weeks after the initial announcement we have more than 50 people on the mailing list, and I’m expecting good turnout for the launch which I hope will be a fun occasion in itself but also the start of something very interesting to be part of. I also hope people bring plenty of ideas for the sorts of events and activities we can organize and the energy and enthusiasm to work at actually bringing these ideas into being.

One of the most important things we have to do, though, is to come up with a name. Although I nicked the idea from them I don’t think we can really use Enfys. And “Sussex University LGBT Staff Network” sounds a bit dull. Any suggestions?

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Thirty years a graduate..

Posted in Biographical, Film with tags , , , , on June 4, 2015 by telescoper

Today got off to a bad start when Radio 3 swtiched on shortly after 6am with a Concerto for Two Harpsichords. Since even one harpsichord is one more harpsichord than I can tolerate, I switched it off immediately and went back to sleep. When I finally got going I arrived at my usual bus stop (at Old Steine) to find it taped off and out of service. The wreckage of a burnt-out bus at the stop provided the obvious explanation. I therefore had to walk all the way up to St Peter’s Church to get a bus up to campus. I got here just in time to have a quick coffee and head off to an two-hour long Joint Planning Meeting with the School of Engineering and Informatics.

All things considered this wasn’t the best start to a birthday I’ve ever had, but at least I now have time for a celebratory cup of tea from my birthday mug.

Mug

Thank you to Miss Lemon for the lovely present – as regular readers of this blog (Sid and Doris Bonkers) will know – the Maltese Falcon is my favourite film.

Anyway, I only have a brief respite because this is a very busy part of the academic year. Next week we enter the time of the Final examination boards where we have to classify the degrees of graduating students. While I was lying in bed recovering from harpsichord-induced schock this morning I realised exactly 30 years ago I had just finished my own final examinations. In those days they were very intense, six three-hour papers in just three days for most students. I got off lightly because I did a theory project which I could substitute for one paper. It was still quite exhausting though. Can that really be thirty years ago?

I remember the grand plans I had to celebrate the end of my finals, especially since they coincided to closely with my birthday. When the time came, however, I was totally exhausted and just ended up having a few beers and crashing out. That’s probably what’s going to happen today too…

Anyway, must get on. Time to prepare for this afternoon’s meeting of the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences Executive Committee. Another two hours. What a way to spend a birthday…

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