Imperial College
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Leon Lucy, R.I.P.
I have the unfortunate duty of using this blog to announce the death a couple of weeks ago of Professor Leon B Lucy, who had been a Visiting Professor working here at Imperial College from 1998. Leon got his PhD in the early 1960s at the University of Manchester, and after postdoctoral positions in Europe…
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Harmony in the Universe
Cosmology fans in and around London: Please come here my colleague Jean–Philippe Uzan, visiting us from Paris, who will talk about “ Harmony in the Universe: between science and music” this coming Thursday, 25 October 2012 in the Huxley Building here at Imperial College. It’s free, but please contact us at astro-outreach@imperial.ac.uk if you’re going…
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Urban Sputnik, Live at Imperial
Urban Sputnik, our collaboration with Vanessa Harden and Dominic Southgate of Gammaroot Design is currently on display at Imperial College in the main entrance of the Norman Foster-designed business school, located on Exhibition Road in London, just up the street from the Science Museum, the V&A Museum and the Natural History Museum. I’ve discussed the…
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End of Term
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I’ve just finished another term, in fact the heaviest teaching load I’ve ever had at once: a twenty-six hour lecture course, three hours a week as one of several computer lab “demonstrators”, and another four hours or so per week in first-year student tutorials. For those from outside of the Imperial system: our tutorials are…
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Training Scientists: What’s the Point?
My colleagues and I spend what is probably an inordinate amount of time complaining about the occasional lapses of the basic skills of our students, their inability to take notes, their obsession with marks and what’s going to be on the exams. Because, like everyone else, we like to complain. But pretty often I get…
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Teaching Cosmology
I’ve just finished teaching my eleven-week winter-term Cosmology course at Imperial. Like all lecturing, it was exhilerating, and exhausting. And like usual, I am somewhat embarrassed to say that I think I understand the subject better than when I started out. (I hope that the students can say some of the same things. Comments from…
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Physics for Fiction
I spent a few hours last week with a bunch of science fiction writers, giving them a tutorial on modern cosmology as part of the (first) “Physics for Fiction” workshop organized by my Imperial Astrophysics Colleague Dave Clements. The participants were some very big names in modern Science Fiction, and some hot up-and-coming writers, including…
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Who Put the Pomp?
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I’ve been busy the last few weeks, writing documents for the Planck SGS RR, grant proposals, getting ready for the exam season, and (I know I can’t complain), travelling to the Aegean. But this afternoon I took a few hours off and attended the Imperial College postgraduate degree ceremony. In and amongst the several hundred…
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Me, the MP, Planck and Paris
If I’ve got any longtime readers, they may recall that I spent a week paired with Anne Snelgrove MP in the UK Parliament a couple of years ago, as part of a program connecting scienctists with Members of Parliament (described here and here). This week, Anne kept up her side of the bargain and visited…
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Doctor Rock Star, and his younger peers
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Congratulations to Dr Brian May, PhD, for successfully defending his PhD thesis, “Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud”. At the time of his defense, I was up in Durham, lecturing to the mostly younger incoming class of STFC-supported UK grad students. Best of luck to them, too, and let’s hope they can finish before…
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