Very sad news arrived today of the death at the age of 96 of the wonderful Patricia Routledge. I guess she is best known for her portrayal of Hyacinth Bucket of Keeping Up Appearances, but to me she will always be Kitty in Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV back in the 1980s. She did many other things besides, but here by way of a tribute is an example of Kitty holding forth as was her wont (although usually not in inebriated fashion). Cheadle just won’t be the same without her.
I’m very sad to have to report the death, at the age of 80, of eminent cosmologist George Smoot, who passed away at his home in Paris on 18th September. The news has been reported in France, where George had been living in recent years, but doesn’t seem to have been covered in the international media yet. I thought I would just record some personal relfections and reminiscences here, rather than try to pre-empt the official biographies.
I was fortunate enough to meet George many times over the years and to get to know him quite well. The first time was at a meeting in Durham for which this was the conference photo:
George is just to the left of centre in the front row with the red-and-white sweater.
What I remember about that meeting is that I gave a contributed talk there (a short one, because I was a mere postdoc at the time). Some time after that, George Smoot gave an invited talk during the course of which he mentioned (positively) the work I had spoken about. I was gobsmacked to have my little contribution recognized by someone so eminent, and it did wonders for my scientific self-confidence. I got the chance to have a conversation with George in person some time later at that meeting and found him very good value: he was both interesting and amusing to talk to. He was someone who took mentorship seriously, and didn’t confine it to those people he was working with directly.
Over the years I met George regularly at scientific meetings, including numerous times at the (then) Daniel Chalonge schools in Sicily and in Paris where we often chatted about science and other things over coffee breaks and dinner. I always found him hugely knowledgeable about many things, but he also had an almost child-like curiosity about things he didn’t previously know. He didn’t quite jump up and down with excitement when he learnt something interesting, but almost. He could also be very direct when disagreeing, which meant that some people found him a bit abrasive. He fell out with other members of the COBE time when he threw away the agreed protocol for the announcement of results in 1992. That caused a lot of bad feeling at the time, but it seems that by the time the Nobel Prize was awarded, some degree of reconciliation had been achieved. I was lucky enough to attend the Prize Ceremonies and at the ball afterwards chatted with both George and John Mather who seemed on very amiable terms then.
Anyway, in the early noughties George invited me to spend some time at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, a visit that I enjoyed enormously. He was a very generous and thougtful host and I was looked after very well. One day at LBL he asked me if the hotel was OK. I replied that it was, but one thing I didn’t like about staying in a hotel was that I liked to cook and that was impossible in a hotel room. I thought nothing more of that conversation until the end of the day when George appeared and asked me if I wanted to “do dinner” at his house that evening. I answered in the affirmative so he drove me to his house, which was very fancy, set into the hillside overlooking Berkeley – like the sort of place I imagine a film star would live – and had a very large and well-provisioned kitchen.
It soon became clear that I’d misunderstood the invitation, in that “do dinner” didn’t mean “eat dinner” but “make dinner”. Although I was slightly taken aback I set about finding what he had in the refrigerator and on the shelves. There being a plentiful supply of spices, I decided to make a tandoori-style dish of chicken baked with yoghurt, with a couple of side dishes, none of which took long to cook. When everything was getting ready I wanted to add some lemon juice but couldn’t find any lemons in the fridge. I asked George if he had any lemons, at which point he showed me into the garden where he had several lemon trees in full fruit. I’ve never lived anywhere that this would be possible! I think he enjoyed the dinner because he paid me back a few days later with a dinner at Chez Panisse. He was quite the bon viveur.
(After that short visit, I was planning to spend a sabbatical year in Berkeley in 2005, but the United States Embassy in London put paid to that idea and I went to CITA in Toronto instead.)
The last encounters I had with George were online; he was in the audience when I gave talks in the Chalonge-de Vega series organized by Norma Sanchez in 2021 (here and here). I think he had already moved to Paris by that time. The first of these talks was about open access publishing in astrophysics; George subsequently co-authored a paper in the Open Journal of Astrophysics.
My favourite quote from George came during a discussion we had at Berkeley when I suggested that some methods used for studying the cosmic microwave background could be applied to the distribution of galaxies. His response was “Galaxies are shit”. To avoid offending my friends who work on galaxies, what he meant by that was that he thought galaxies were too messy for any statistical measurements to sufficiently reliable to compete with the CMB. I think he would have preferred a universe in which all galaxies were identical, like electrons.
I’m sure many others will have their own personal reflections on their interactions with George Smoot, but he also had a huge influence on many people who never met him personally, through his enormous contributions to astrophysics and cosmology. We will no doubt read many professionally-written official obituaries in days to come, but all I can say in a personal blog post is that he was a character, a very original thinker, a fine scientist, and a very nice man. Along with many others, I will miss him enormously.
I just heard that the great musical satirist Tom Lehrer has passed away at the age of 97. I was trying to pick one of his songs to post as a tribute but I couldn’t decide which one to choose. I was going to go with “The Elements” but that would be lost on an audience of astronomers for whom there are only Hydrogen, Helium and Metals…
So instead of picking one tune I thought I’d share an entire concert of his, recorded in 1967 in Denmark, that contains no fewer than 17 of his songs including such favourites such “The Elements” and “The Vatican Rag” but also some less familiar numbers. There are even Danish subtitles to help you.
The Sixties were a hot time for satire, and it’s amazing how well some of Tom Lehrer’s songs stand up sixty years later, even today when satire is mostly impossible. Tom Lehrer”s irreverent, and sometimes rather dark, humour brought laughter into the lives of so many people.
It’s worth mentioning that, having decided that he’d made quite enough money, Tom Lehrer released all his songs into the public domain. Class.
I’ve just caught up with the news of the death last week of composer, arranger and pianist Lalo Schifrin. He was 93. Most of the media coverage of his passing concentrates on his many excellent TV and movie scores, such as Mission Impossible*, Dirty Harry and Bullitt, but he was first and foremost a Jazz musician so I thought I’d pay tribute by posting a relatively early work by him.
Lalo Schifrin was a huge fan of trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie whom he met when Gillespie toured Schifrin’s home country of Argentina in 1956. This long piece, Gillespiana was written for Gillespie’s big band in 1958. You can here in it many of the musical ideas that Schifrin was later to include in his film scores. In 1960, Lalo Schifrin moved to York and joined Gillespie’s band as a pianist after the departure of Junior Mance. He only stayed with the band for a couple of years but together they made some great records, especially Dizzy on the French Riviera (which I have blogged about here).
Anyway, Gillespiana is suite in five movements (Prelude, Blues, Panamerica, Africana, and Toccata) that takes up an entire album that was released in 1960. It’s not so well known nowadays but I think it’s great. It gives ample opportunity not only to listen to Dizzy’s trumpet and Lalo Schifrin’s piano – as well as the enormously underrated alto saxophonist and flautist Leo Wright – but also to enjoy the wonderful arrangements.
*The original theme for Mission Impossible is written in 5/4 time. Not a lot of people know that the resulting rhythmic pattern (dash dash dot dot) is Morse code for the letters M I…
I was saddened to hear of the death on Tuesday at the age of 85 of novelist Edmund White. Like many gay men of my age I read his semi-autobiographical novel A Boy’s Own Story as a teenager, and it had a profound effect on me.
It’s the story of an adolescent boy coming to terms with his sexuality in the American mid-West during the 1950s. It is as frank about the description of gay sex as it is truthful about the confusion that goes with being a teenager. When I bought it I didn’t realize it was going to be so sexually explicit, as the whole subject of gay sex was very much taboo in those days. I didn’t think it was possible to write about such things in such a matter-of-fact way and at the same time so beautifully. The book is also unflinching in its description of the personality flaws of the central character.
The Irish Times has a collection of reflections by various writers on Edmund White that say far more, and far more eloquently, than I ever could. I’ll just say, as a (now) sixty-something gay man that Edmund White helped me on my journey to self-acceptance when I was a struggling teenager all those years ago, and for that I will always be profoundly grateful.
I heard this morning of the death at the age of 86 of renowned Indian cosmologist Jayant Vishnu Narlikar. I understand he died peacefully in his sleep in Pune after a brief illness.
Scientifically, Jayant Narlikar is probably best known for his work with Fred Hoyle on a conformal gravity theory and as an advocate of the Steady State theory of cosmology. In India however his fame extended far beyond the world of research, as an educator and science popularist, as well as Founder-Director of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) in Pune. Those who met him – as I was lucky enough to do – will also remember him as a kind and gracious man, and a self-effacing inspirer of young scientists. During my visit I gave a talk there, which Narlikar attended, and we had a very nice conversation afterwards from which I learnt a huge amount.
The Directorship at IUCAA came with a house which had a very nice lawn, on which I remember playing croquet with Donald Lynden-Bell and others, but that’s another story. Another random thing I remember is that I remember is that Narlikar’s username on the IUCAA email system was “jvn” and he was often referred to informally by that name.
Although he never really abandoned the Steady State cosmology, despite the weight of evidence in favour if the Big Bang, it is to Narlikar’s great credit that he didn’t try to impose his own scientific ideas on those working at IUCAA. In fact he assembled an excellent group of cosmologists and astrophysicists and encourage them to do whatever they liked.
I first visited IUCAA in 1994 to work with Varun Sahni. In those days Westerners mainly went to Pune to visit an ashram (usually the one run by the guru Rajneesh). I remember when I arrived on the train from Mumbai and tried to get a taxi to the IUCAA campus, the driver asked me “which ashram?” I had long hair and a beard at that time, so I looked a potential hippy. I said, “No ashram. Professor Narlikar”. He knew exactly where to take me; “Narlikar” was a household name in India, where the newspapers are awash with tributes today (e.g. here) and where his loss will be keenly felt.
Once again I find myself using this blog to pass on sad news. This time it is of the death of renowned astrophysicist Jerry Ostriker (pictured left in 2012), who passed away on Monday 6th April 2025 just a week before his 88th birthday.
Jeremiah Paul Ostriker (to give his full name) was an extremely energetic, versatile and influential theorist who worked on a wide range of problems in diverse areas of astrophysics and produced a number of classic papers. Close to my own specialism I would quote two in particular: one written with Jim Peebles in 1973 about the stability of galactic disks; and the other with Martin Rees in 1977 about the role of gas cooling and fragmentation in determining the size of galaxies and clusters. He also did much to establish the use of hydrodynamic simulations in cosmology and was an early adopter of the current standard cosmological model, including a cosmological constant. He worked on many other things too, including pulsars and galactic nuclei.
I only met Jerry Ostriker a few times, mainly at conferences – where he was never shy to contribute to discussions after talks – but also once back in the 1990s when I was a visitor Princeton (where he was Professor). I didn’t have much time to talk to him then as he always seemed to be on the go, so I never really got to know him personally. After spending most of his career in Princeton, including a spell as Provost, in 2001 Ostriker moved to Cambridge for a short stint as Plumian Professor, before returning to Princeton.
It is my sad duty to pass on the sad news of the death of Sergei Shandarin, who passed away yesterday at the age of 77. He had been suffering from cancer for some time and had been undergoing chemotherapy, alas to no avail. Last week he was moved onto palliative care and we knew he would soon be leaving us. I was going to post something last night when I heard that he had died, but I just couldn’t find the words. I send my deepest condolences to his family, friends and colleagues who are grieving.
(The picture on the left shows Sergei in 2006; I’m grateful to John Peacock for letting me use it here.)
Sergei Fyodor Shandarin was born in 1947 and gained his PhD at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1974. He was a student of the great physicist Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich (whom I blogged about here). Sergei moved to the USA in 1991 to take up a Professorship at the University of Kansas, in Lawrence, where he remained until his retirement. More recently he and his wife Vika moved to Toronto to be closer to his daughter Anya and their grandchildren.
Sergei’s main research interests were the dynamics and statistics of the “Cosmic Web” – the supercluster- void network in spacial distribution of galaxies. In particular, he was interested in nonlinear dynamics of gravitational instability, which is the major mechanism for the formation of a large variety of objects in the universe, and in geometrical and topological statistical descriptors of the distribution of mass and galaxies in space.
These topics overlap considerably with my own and I was delighted to have the opportunity to work with Sergei in 1992 when I was invited by Adrian Melott as a visitor to Lawrence fro about a month. My first impression of Sergei was that he was a bit scary – in that typical Russian physicist sort of way – but I soon discovered that, beneath his initially rather fierce demeanour, he was actually a kind and friendly person with a fine sense of humour. I remember that research visit very well, in fact, not only because of Adrian’s and Sergei’s hospitality, but also because the project we did together went so well that we not only completed the research, but I returned to London with a completed manuscript; the paper that resulted was published in early 1993.
After that I kept in touch with Sergei mainly at conferences. Last night after I heard the news that he has passed away I brought a box of old photographs down from the loft and rummaged around for some pictures. Here are two from a meeting in India in 1994, in which you can see Sergei very much in the centre of things:
The picture on the left shows: (standing, L to R) Francis Bernardeau, Paolo Catelan, Sergei, ?*, Paul R. Shapiro; (crouching) Enzo Branchini and Bernard Jones. The picture on the right has the addition of, among others, Varun Sahni (between Paul Shapiro and Bernard Jones), Dick Bond (with his arm on Sergei’s shoulder) and Sabino Matarrese (front left); I’m on the right of the front row. I remember these pictures were taken on an excursion from Pune to see the historic caves and temples at Ajanta and Ellora.
(*I think the unidentified person might be Lars Hernquist, but I’m not sure: I’d be grateful for any information.)
I also particular remember meeting up with Sergei at meetings in Los Angeles, Nice, Valencia (the meeting at which the first picture was taken). and most recently in Estonia (for a meeting to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Zel’dovich). He was always up for scientific discussions, but also liked to relax with a drink or several; he also liked to watch football.
Sergei was a wonderful scientist as well as a warm and generous human being who was held in a very high regard by the cosmological community worldwide. We will all miss him terribly.
I just heard the sad news of the death at the age of 88 of the wonderful singer Roberta Flack. Many years ago I posted my favourite song of hers (performed live on Top of the Pops way back in 1972) but it seems the link I used is now broken so I’ll post the original version. Roberta Flack’s The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face first appeared on her album First Take back in 1969 but it didn’t become a hit until it featured in Clint Eastwood’s (1971) film Play Misty For Me. Incidentally, the bass player on this track is the great Ron Carter.
It’s probably the most beautiful love song I’ve ever heard and to my mind it hasn’t dated at all in 50 years. I suppose if you’ve ever felt about someone the way it describes you never forget…
Rest in peace, Roberta Flack (1937-2025). To the dark, and the endless skies.
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In the Dark 