At roughly 6pm on Friday, I became Dr Lintott. I won’t be changing the title of the blog, but thought I’d mention a rather nice tradition, that of starting one’s thesis with a suitable chosen quotation. Somewhere there is enough material for an academic study of this (what did Einstein choose? What does the difference between the quotations chosen by mathematicians and economists, say, tell us about their subject) but for now I thought I’d share mine. Like everything else, this field is subject to inflation and so I settled on three
‘He could never resist an old wine or a new idea’ – Brecht, life of Galileo
‘I knew that even if I were second or third rate, it was astronomy that mattered’ – Hubble
and a poem by Walt Whitman, not normally my favourite author but who gets it right here:
WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture- room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
Mark Garth on October 22, 2006
Congratulations and keep up the good blog.
Samuel Hawkins on October 22, 2006
Well done Chris. You must be very pleased.
John Cave on October 22, 2006
Congratulations Doctor!
Well done Chris, just reward for a lot of hard work I’m sure.
John.
Karl on October 22, 2006
Congratulations!
Nick Hood on October 23, 2006
Congratulations, Dr. Chris, on your degree and your new book. You and those like you provide plenty of evidence for those of us trying to convince kids that Physics is not only fun, it is rewarding, valuable, socially and morally right.
Graeme Coates on October 23, 2006
Hey, congratulations Chris! (Bizarrely, I heard about this this morning through an interview on Virgin Radio with Brian May). I read that you’re up in Oxford now – drop us a line sometime as I work here as well (though sadly not in astrophysics…)
Cheers for now.
John & Marion & Paul on October 23, 2006
Hi Dr Lintott, Congratulations and you are our STAR
Ian Robinson on October 23, 2006
Congratulations Dr. Lintott
All that work was worthwhile.
Sagredo on October 23, 2006
Well done that man, hope everything is going well with you and the new book launch! Also, thanks very much for getting me started on the authoring (you can find it on amazon now!).
Don’t go confusing small green fruits with each other!
Rosario on October 24, 2006
Congratulations Dr Lintott. I would like to talk to you about Bang. I´m a journalist in Colombia South America and that would be a pleasure to be with you in the station. this is my mail. Please let me know what you think..
Best Regards.
Rosario
Paul on October 24, 2006
Just to record my hearty congratulations here, Chris. Well done, too on a superb book launch yesterday which I was lucky enough to attend.
Paul
http://skymania.blogspot.com
Chris on October 30, 2006
Congratulations Dr Lintott, the first in the family. Jenny told me the fantastic news lastnight. Can’t wait to read the book I hope it gets published here in Sydney.
Chris Clark
Anya on November 9, 2006
Well done Chris – I knew you’d go all the way!
Andy Burnham, Steven Gerrard and the spiral galaxies | Matthew Taylor's blog on January 15, 2009
[...] possible if you start with people’s enthusiasms is underlined in a today’s Technology Guardian. Dr Chris Lintott, a researcher in the Department of Physics at Oxford University, has enlisted the efforts of [...]