When last we left, you saw evidence that I was a boy obsessed with astronomy. It drove my very being. It was the reason for everything I did. It represented the meaning of my life.
Come senior year, I ignored the reality of my GPA and nonetheless plunged into my graduate school applications. Everything looked great. My recommendations. My activities. My GRE scores. Everything except my GPA. Surely, I thought, someone would see it for what really happened. My senior advisor, Professor Pierre Demarque, encouraged me.
I really appreciated Professor Demarque’s confidence in my application process. As my senior advisor, he allowed me to take on a project that other students in other schools might not have had the opportunity to undertake. I was permitted to Continue Reading “The World – The Universe – That Might Have Been… (Part II)”
Journey Beyond The Center Of The ‘Stacks’
Yale’s Astronomy Library was also probably the smallest library on campus. I was the only Astronomy & Physics major in my class. (Back in my day, the only way you could major in astronomy was to double major in physics. It was a lot of classes, with precious little room for elective courses like philosophy, literature, history, and, well, just about everything else.)
My virtually personal reference room was a treasure trove of ancient knowledge. And by ‘ancient’ I mean the actual data is centuries old. Astronomy, for the most part, collects light data from distant stars, galaxies, and nebulae. The objects responsible for these traveling photons lie lightyears distant, sometimes thousands of light years away.
While a light year represents a measure of distance, it also tells you how long ago the Continue Reading “Journey Beyond The Center Of The ‘Stacks’”