Archive for the Biographical Category

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R.I.P. Mark Birkinshaw (1954-2023)

Posted in Biographical, R.I.P., The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on August 17, 2023 by telescoper

I just heard this morning of the passing of Mark Birkinshaw (left) who was, since 1992, William P. Coldrick Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at the University of Bristol. Before that he held positions in Cambridge and Harvard.

I’m told that he died in hospital of a “short but serious illness”.

Among other important contributions to cosmology and astrophysics, in 1984, along with Steve Gull of Cambridge and Harry Hardebeck of the Owens Valley Observatory, was the first to measure experimentally the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect in a galaxy cluster; the reference is here.

It was in Cambridge as an undergraduate that I first met Mark Birkinshaw. He taught the long vacation course on Physical Applications of Complex Variables that I took in the summer of 1984. It was a tough course but he was an excellent teacher. All these years later I still have my handwritten notes for that course as well as the handouts. I still use them too.

After that I saw him regularly at conferences and seminars and on various committees for PPARC and then STFC. He was extremely diligent in such “community service” roles and was an invaluable contributor owing to his wide range of knowledge beyond his own speciality.

Having been a mainstay of astrophysics research at Bristol University for over thirty years, Mark will be greatly missed. I send condolences to his friends and colleagues at Bristol and elsewhere in the world, and especially to Diana. You can send thoughts, tributes and condolences and/or make a charitable donation in Mark’s memory here, where there are also details of the funeral arrangements.

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Winding Up

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on August 16, 2023 by telescoper

This morning, we held the last meeting this academic year of the Departmental Examination Board to look over the results of the recent repeat examinations ahead of the final upload this afternoon. That having been satisfactorily completed, I have now finished my teaching-related duties for this academic year. I start a year’s sabbatical on 1st September, so I won’t be attending more Exam Boards for a while!

Another loose end to be dealt with was the Departmental Twitter account, which I have been running. Twitter is really terrible these days and I have decided to deactivate my own personal account entirely on 31st August. The departmental account probably should stay open, so this afternoon I transferred its controls to our Departmental Adminstrator. Just before doing so, I realised that the password was a bit rude, so I quickly changed it to something more presentable before handing it over to avoid embarrassment.

If you want to follow that account, by the way, you can!

All I have left to do now is remove a few personal things from my office for whoever uses it next academic year. I’ve got plenty of time to do that, although I will be away for part of next week (way down South, in Cork).

Tonight, however, although it’s a school night, I think I’ll celebrate by having a little drink and watching the Super Cup Final between Man City and Sevilla the telly box. Cheers!

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Blues for the Fisherman

Posted in Biographical, Jazz with tags , on August 15, 2023 by telescoper

I had a pleasant surprise when I switched on the radio last night to listen to The Blue of the Night in that the presenter Bernard Clarke not only played a lot of music by the late great Art Pepper but also mentioned my name on air for having pointed him at the particular session from which he chose the tracks. I think he mistakes me for some sort of expert!

Anyway, listening last night brought back a lot of memories of hearing Art Pepper play in the flesh and many nights I spent in Ronnie Scott’s club during the 1990s when I lived in London. I thought I’d share here one of the tracks played last night.

The performance in question was recorded live at Ronnie Scott’s Club in London in June 1980 and first released on the small British record label Mole Jazz, an offshoot of the famous (sadly now defunct) record shop of the same name that used to be on Gray’s Inn Road. It’s a brilliant, brilliant album, with the intense atmosphere of a live performance adding to the superb playing of the musicians. It’s also extremely well recorded – so much so that you feel you are on stage with the musicians!

The band is listed as the “Milcho Leviev Quartet featuring Art Pepper”, although that was probably for contractual reasons, as this was the same band that toured extensively as “The Art Pepper Quartet”: Art Pepper on alto saxophone, Milcho Leviev on piano, Tony Dumas on bass and Carl Burnett on drums. I was also lucky enough to see this band play live at the Newcastle Jazz festival in 1981, not long after this recording, and they were great then too although that was in a concert hall so had a much less intense atmosphere. Art Pepper sadly passed away in 1982 and Milcho Leviev in 2019.

As far as I’m aware this record wasn’t released on CD until relatively recently, but now a whole lot of extra tracks recorded during Art Pepper’s residency in Frith Street are also available. There’s so much to enjoy in these recordings, including the superb drumming of Carl Burnett and virtuosic piano of Milcho Leviev, but the star of the performance for me is Art Pepper. His playing is at times lyrical and at times agonized, but always compelling and this band was especially good at spontaneous transitions of mood and dynamic. Anyway, here is the title track of the original album, Blues for the Fisherman.

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The Challenges of Large Collaborations in STEM

Posted in Biographical, Harassment Bullying etc, Mental Health with tags , , , , , on August 12, 2023 by telescoper

There’s a new paper on the arXiv by Kamiel Janssens and Michiko Ueda that addresses some of the challenges that arise for people working in large STEM collaborations. Although the sample they use is drawn from gravitational-wave collaborations I think many of the patterns that emerge will also apply elsewhere, e.g. in the Euclid Consortium.

Here is the abstract:

Large-scale international scientific collaborations are increasingly common in the field of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). However, little is known about the well-being of the members participating in these `big science’ collaborations, which can present unique challenges due to the scale of their work. We conducted a survey among members of three large, international collaborations in the field of gravitational-wave astrophysics in the summer of 2021. Our objective was to investigate how career stage, job insecurity and minority status are associated with reported levels of depressive symptoms as well as the desire to leave academia. We found that early-career scientists and certain minoritized groups reported significantly higher levels of depressive symptoms compared to senior members or those who do not consider themselves as a member of minoritized groups. Furthermore, relatively young members, staff scientists/engineers, and those experiencing high levels of job insecurity and lack of recognition were more likely to frequently consider leaving academia. Our findings suggest that improving recognition for personal contributions to collaborative work and providing clearer job perspectives could be two key factors in enhancing the well-being of young scientists and reducing the potential outflow from academia.

arXiv:2308.05107

I would like to add a personal note. When I was an early-career researcher in cosmology I was for the most part given a free hand to work on whatever I wanted to do. My first papers were either sole author or with one or two others, being people I’d met and wanted to collaborate with. Nowadays many opportunities – indeed, most – for postdocs are associated with very large teams into which one just has to fit. The work is also highly directed with little choice of what to do, and it is harder to individuals to shine even if the team is well managed, and not all senior scientists in such collaborations have good leadership skills. Theoretical astrophysics is challenging enough but sometimes the really difficult thing is the behaviour of other people!

I’m not saying that this way of working is necessarily bad, just that it is very different from what I experienced. It does not therefore surprise me to hear that many, especially younger, people struggle in the current environment and why it is important for large collaborations to do the best they can to help. I think part of that involves us oldies recognizing that things are very different now from what they were like back in our day.

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Break Points

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on August 11, 2023 by telescoper

Well, that’s one reasonably large set of tasks finished. Today I completed the grading of my repeat examinations. The marks are now checked and uploaded to the system. For good measure, I also checked the marking of a few papers done by other staff. So that’s all done and dusted in time for a meeting of the Examination Board next week at which we’ll peruse the outcomes.

It’s strange to think that this will be the last set of examinations I have to correct until January 2025. I’m away on sabbatical from September 1st 2023 until 31st August 2024 so have no teaching duties until the First Semester of 2024, with examinations coming the following January. Although I realize the assessment of student learning is important, setting and marking examinations is not something that I greatly enjoy so it will be very nice to have a break from it.

Earlier this week the President of Maynooth University sent around a missive to all staff about the news that had leaked out about the proposed merger with Dundalk IT. That email referred twice to the “summer break”. It is ironic that such wording should be used right in the middle of repeat examination period. The last few weeks certainly haven’t felt like a break to me! It’s yet another indication of the gulf between the view that Senior Management have of academic life and the reality.

By the way, the aforementioned Presidential circular promised that staff would be fully updated in the Autumn about the proposed merger. I hope in this new spirit of openness the President will also update staff about the outcomes of the “Staff Climate and Culture Survey” which was carried out in 2022. The promise was made then that results would be published in early 2023. No such results have ever been communicated to staff and all mention of this survey has been wiped off the University’s web pages.

Having finished exam marking duties for the academic year, my attention will now turn to other things to be done before I take off for sabbatical land. Next week I have cleared the decks to complete a paper I’ve been struggling over for a long time. Just before the repeat examinations started I spotted the error that was holding me back, so hopefully it will now all fall quickly into place. I’ll be very happy if I can get that submitted before leaving.

In the mean time, though, it’s time for a wine break. Cheers!

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ITP 2023 at Maynooth

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff on August 9, 2023 by telescoper

I’m a bit preoccupied at the moment with marking repeat examinations but, now that I have three packs done and only one to go, I thought I’d do a quick advertisement for a little meeting that takes place in Maynooth about a month from now. This is the annual Irish Theoretical Physics (ITP) Meeting which takes place in a different location in Ireland each yea. Last year it was at DIAS in Dublin; this year it’s Maynooth’s turn.

In the pat these meetings have been given different names, including Irish Quantum Foundations (IQF) and Irish Quantum Field Theory (IQFT), as well as ITP. For this reason I usually refer to it as ITPQF+…

You can find out more about the meeting here, including instructions on how to register should you wish to do so! The detailed scientific programme will be announced in due course, though there is a rumour that I might be giving a public talk on the first evening.

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Lá Saoire i mí Lúnasa

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , on August 7, 2023 by telescoper

Today, Monday 7th August 2023, being the first Monday in August, is a Bank Holiday in Ireland. This holiday was created by the Bank Holiday Act of 1871 when Ireland was under British rule. While the August Bank holiday was subsequently moved to the end of August in England and Wales, it has remained at the start of August in Ireland. Today is also a Bank Holiday in Scotland, though the Scots have the best of both worlds and have a holiday at the end of August too.

I recently mentioned that 1st August marks the old Celtic festival of Lughnasadh, named after the God Lugh, on which is celebrated the beginning of the harvest season. This coincides with the English Lammas Day one of many Christian festivals with pagan origins. Traditionally this marks the start of the harvest season and is celebrated accordingly, with rites involving the first fruit and bread baked from flour obtained from the first corn. It is also one of the cross-quarter days, lying roughly half-way between the Summer Solstice and the Autumnal Equinox (in the Northern Hemisphere).

In the Northern hemisphere, from an astronomical point of view, the solar year is defined by the two solstices (summer, around June 21st and winter, around December 21st) and the equinoxes (spring, around March 21st, and Autumn, around September 21st). These four events divide the year into four roughly equal parts of about 13 weeks each.

Now, if you divide each of these intervals in two you divide the year into eight pieces of six and a bit weeks each. The dates midway between the astronomical events mentioned above are (roughly) :

  • 1st February: Imbolc (Candlemas)
  • 1st May: Beltane (Mayday)
  • 1st August: Lughnasadh (Lammas)
  • 1st November: Samhain (All Saints Day)

The names I’ve added are taken from the Celtic/neo-Pagan (and Christian terms) for these cross-quarter days. These timings are rough because the dates of the equinoxes and solstices vary from year to year. Imbolc is often taken to be the 2nd of February (Groundhog Day) and Samhain is sometimes taken to be October 31st, Halloween. But hopefully you get the point.

It seems to be a tradition in Maynooth that the Bank Holidays in May and August are are adjacent to examinations. This year the repeat examinations began on 1st August. My first paper (of four) was on Saturday and I have two more on Tuesday (tomorrow). That means by the end of tomorrow I will have three packets of scripts to mark…

There are two ways of looking at the fact that the day before these exams is a holiday. One is that students have an extra day to revise. Another is that the holiday is ruined by having to prepare for examinations.

Anyway, by the time the Solstice arrives I will hopefully away on sabbatical.

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An Garda Síochána

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth with tags , , on August 4, 2023 by telescoper

I’m a bit late getting around to posting today as I’ve been busy all day sending off for documents and filling in forms connected with my forthcoming sabbatical. My relocation is a little more complicated than I initially thought as although Ireland is in the European Union, it is not in the Schengen area, so a visit for longer than 90 days requires a bit of paperwork. In fact I am applying for what is called a “non-lucrative residence permit”. It seems to be strange to be applying for non-lucrative status, as that’s what I seem to have had all my life, but there you go.

Anyway, as part of the bureaucratic process I have to acquire a Police Certificate, a document that states that I have no criminal record over the last five years. To get this in Ireland one has to visit a Garda station. There is one in Maynooth, but unfortunately there is rarely anyone staffing it, so I decided to go instead to Leixlip, where the station is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s also just a short bus trip from Maynooth.

So this morning I downloaded the requisite form from the Garda website, collected the documents listed there, and off I went to Leixlip. I had to wait a little bit of time because there were a couple of people needing things. One was inquiring about a court summons for something he claimed he had paid already but didn’t have a receipt. Eventually he left, though he wasn’t happy about having to attend court. The next chap just had to sign some sort of register. He might have been on probation or had to check in with the Gardaí to fulfil some other conditions.

I always feel a bit sorry for people working at the front desk in a place like a Garda station. They must often be confronted by people who are not having a very good day, and probably have to deal with a bit of aggravation from time to time.

Then it was my turn. The officer at the desk was very friendly but when I explained what I needed he produced a form that stated I needed additional documents not listed on the website, including a copy of my birth certificate, a document explaining what I needed the certificate for, and a stamped addressed envelope to receive the certificate. I was a bit annoyed, but had no alternative but to go back to Maynooth and collect the missing papers. Bureaucracy is bureaucracy and there’s no point letting it get to you.

After returning in due course with the gaps in my documents filled, I found the waiting area at Garda station empty and I was able to hand over my documents which I was assured were now sufficient. I just have to wait a bit to get the certificate in the post.

On the bus home after the second trip to Leixlip it struck me that today was the first time I’ve been in a Garda station, and the second time…

Now that’s out of the way, it’s wine o’clock and the bank holiday weekend beckons.

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A Day of Outage

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth on August 3, 2023 by telescoper

Today has been a rather eventful day.

This morning at around 7.50am, the power went off in my house in Maynooth. I looked at the ESB network site and it informed me that a large area was affected, extending as far as Celbridge. I could hear burglar alarms ringing all around the estate, evidently triggered by the interruption to the mains supply. I am aware

I had actually just got out of bed when the failure happened but, there being no electricity to make breakfast nor to have a shower, the ESB indicating that it would take until 9am to fix the “outage”, and being unable to function without at least one coffee, I took the obvious course of action and went back to bed. In fact the power came on well before 9am so I had my breakfast and shower, then went around resetting the clocks on various bits of equipment.

It was only when I looked at the burglar alarm that I realized that the power cut had fried its circuits and I could not reset it. I therefore had to search around the internet for someone to come and fix it.

While I was looking on the internet for a company that would deal with the alarm system I have, I checked my work email and discovered that a the new TSI building had no power at around 9.30am. Whether that was connected with the larger problem I don’t know for sure, but it took longer to fix. I don’t know whether any other buildings on campus were affected either. I only received notification that power had been restored just after 11am.

Unfortunately there were a large number of repeat examinations due to take place in the building at 9.30, none of which could go ahead; those papers are now deferred until 10th August. None of the repeat examinations to be taken by students in the Department of Theoretical Physics were scheduled in that slot, so our students were unaffected, but over 300 other students in other Departments were inconvenienced.

P.S. my domestic burglar alarm is now fixed and functioning properly, in case you had any ideas…

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Notes to Future Self

Posted in Biographical, The Universe and Stuff with tags , on July 28, 2023 by telescoper

Yesterday I was tidying up a bit and came across the old notebooks I used when I was a research student. As I suppose is the case with everyone else, there’s quite a lot in them that never went anywhere. If you can read the example above, about 3/4 of the way down the right-hand page I left a note saying “This is a pointless task”. I can’t remember if that referred to that particular integral or my research in general!

Some people who have seen this picture remarked on the size of my integral signs. That’s because I had to do quite a lot of integrals with complicated integrands, so I got into the habit of drawing big integral signs as a prelude to writing down what I assumed would be a horrible formula.

The way I worked in those days (1985-88) was to do a lot of rough scribblings on scrap paper. When I got to something I thought was promising I would write up a “neat” version in the notebook and throw away the workings. I know younger folks these days do most of their work on a screen but, as an old fogey, I still write a lot down on paper or on a blackboard. I didn’t have my own blackboard when I was a PhD student, but I did have plenty of notebooks – most of which I have kept. I think that I’ll always find an essential part of the mathematical thought process involves a pen or piece of chalk in my hand, moving around and guiding my brain.

Looking through these books I remember that I also wrote down ideas for follow-up projects. I managed to do very few of these, but some were done by other people elsewhere independently of me, so at least they were reasonable ideas!

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