The Academic Descent to Me
How interesting, today I learned that Derek Burgess, the PhD supervisor of my PhD supervisor (Brian McMaster) was himself supervised by Frank Smithies. With a little help from the Mathematical Genealogy Project this has helped me work out my academic "parentage". Colin Turner, Queen's University of Belfast, 1997 Brian McMaster, Queen's University of Belfast, 1972 […]
More to a book than its cover
Today I have found myself reading about three authors. These three men had various levels of fame and in each case, the interest today was more about them than it was about their work. Samuel Clements aka Mark Twain, the great American writer was coming to my attention because his century long delay in publishing […]
More about LHC black holes
Last week I wrote a little about the size of black holes, and incidentally discussed very primitive calculations I did on the lifespan of any black hole created by the LHC. A few days later, this interesting article showed the results of professional physicists on just how little such little black holes could grow, in […]
Black Hole Radius, or How I came to love the LHC
I allowed myself to become rather distracted by my second years last week as the class was finishing. They were talking about an episode of Horizon that discussed General Relativity and theories of Quantum Gravity. What followed was a free ranging discussion on the nature of infinity, mentioned briefly in the program. But we also […]
"Anyone can teach maths"
How many times I have heard this quote. I beg to differ. I was on my way home from work yesterday, listening to BBC radio 2. A woman was on making a music request. The presenter (Stuart Maconie) asked her what she did for a living. Woman: "I'm a teacher" SM: "What do you teach?" […]