both and neither academic or artistic

I wish somebody offered me a job just like that, after a short email exchange.

I wish to offer you a job.

It is a peculiar response to your request for more information, I realize, but I ask you to consider my proposal with an open mind.

I know a degree about you from my formal inquiries (I hope you don’t mind, but I couldn’t risk error). And your response encouraged me to conclude that you’re exactly the person I’m looking for.

My needs are uncomplicated. I wish to employ a bright, able-bodied person with the right kind of eye to help me locate some very specific art works.

You fit those requirements admirably, and I’m inclined to believe that you are at a stage in your career where you need an extra challenge.

The job I’m offering you will require resourcefulness, imagination, willingness to travel, plus a deep love of artifact. The salary would be substantially higher than the one you receive at present.

I don’t think I’ve misjudged your potential for change.

Professional researchers are all well and good, but this is a task that requires a subtle sensibility that is both and neither academic or artistic.

Nick Bantock, The Venetian’s Wife ; highlighter mine

jealousies and rivalries

From Friends, Lovers, Chocolate by Alexander McCall Smith:

Isabel did not like her desk to get too cluttered, but that did not mean that it was uncluttered. In fact, most of the time there were too many papers on it, usually manuscripts that had to be sent off for peer assessment. She was not sure about the term peer assessment, even if it was the widely accepted term for a crucial stage in the publishing of journal articles. Sometimes the expression amounted to exactly that: equals looked dispassionately at papers by equals and gave their view. But Isabel had discovered that this did not always happen, and papers were consigned into the hands of their authors’ friends or enemies. This was unwitting; it was impossible for anybody to keep track of the jealousies and rivalries that riddled academia, and Isabel had to hope that she could spot the concealed agendas that lay behind outright antagonism or, more often, and more subtly, veiled antagonism: ‘an interesting piece, perhaps interesting enough to attract a ripple of attention.’ Philosophers could be nasty, she reflected, and moral philosophers the nastiest of all.

so long, 3.091x

Hooray, I just downloaded a pdf file certifying that I

“successfully completed 3.091x: Introduction to Solid State Chemistry, a course of study offered by MITx, an online learning initiative of The Massachusetts Institute of Technology through edX”.

Frankly I don’t understand why it took 17 days to generate the certificate but hey, it was a free course and I wasn’t in a hurry.

I took this course hoping to refresh or possibly fill some gaps in my university chemistry, and also because it was one of the inaugural courses offered by edX. I expected it to be both challenging and fun. It was challenging all right. But it could do with a little bit more fun.

For the benefit of future students, here are my personal impressions of the course.

forever foreign

In the preface to his novel NO, Carl Djerassi wrote:

A striking phenomenon of the contemporary science scene is the remarkable Asianization of the American research laboratory: Asians now represent in certain disciplines, such as chemistry or engineering, the majority of graduate students in many American universities. In many of these institutions, more than half the postdoctoral fellows (the most exploited but also most productive sector of the research establishment) have received the bulk of their college or university education in Asia.

NO was published in 1998. You’d think that since then the said postdocs moved up to professorial positions across American academia and have taken, well, most of them. Wrong! As Lilian Gomory Wu and Wei Jing write in their recent Nature article:

Across all sectors, Asians in US STEM [science, technology, engineering and maths] careers are not reaching leadership positions at the same rate as white people, or even as members of other underrepresented groups. In academia, just 42% of Asian men are tenured, compared with 58% of white men, 49% of black men and 50% of Hispanic men. Just 21% of Asian women in academia are tenured, the lowest proportion for any ethnicity or gender. They are also least likely to be promoted to full professor.

But why? The authors argue that

east Asians’ humble demeanour could cause them to describe the implications of their research in modest terms, which might bring them lower ratings from reviewers.

On the other hand,

a work group of the US government’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reports that Asians are often perceived as ‘forever foreign’, which can affect how others assess their ability to communicate, their competence and, more importantly, their trustworthiness.

It’s all good to be hardworking, patient, family oriented and so on, but if you don’t sex up your research, you don’t get promoted. And don’t get trusted either.

season greetings to excellent people

This is the time of year — again! — when they start cleaning their desks and send holiday greetings to unsuccessful applicants. I don’t even have to open these emails anymore to know what’s there. I just got one today.

Dear Dr. Doctor,

Thank you for your recent application.

The appointing committees have now had a chance to consider your application and have on this occasion decided not to take it any further.

You were up against some outstanding candidates and the choice of the shortlist was very difficult.

On behalf of whoever it is who couldn’t bother to write himself, I should like to thank you for your interest in applying.

With best wishes,

Human Resources

The other one came last week. I don’t remember what the application was about because the letter referred to it by some number and right now I am too tired to look it up. Most probably it was regarding the position advertised last Summer. I liked the wording so much that I made a note of it:

To continue its policy of investment in excellent people, the School of Something Else at the University of Poshborough is seeking to appoint up to (some number) high calibre individuals at either high or even higher level.

But I am the excellent people! How come they don’t see that?

I know. This is all my fault, really. Instead of just sending the application off and forgetting about it, I am worrying that they will expect more of me than I can deliver. So I put all sorts of ridiculous stuff in my covering letter. For example:

As you can see from my CV, I do not have a strong record of teaching at the university.

How’s that? I bet nobody else is doing this. My goal is to convince them that I am the best candidate to fill the position, not some sort of impostor. If they can see something from my CV, then they will see. Or maybe not. The point is not to worry about that.

Another mistake I keep on repeating is to do an informal enquiry, whenever such an option exists.

Dear Professor Professor,

I would like to apply for a position of Somebody in Something as advertised somewhere. However before sending the full application, I am asking for your kind advice.

<insert a stupid bit about not having a strong record of doing Something>

I do not wish to waste the expert committee’s time. <Why?> Therefore I would greatly appreciate your frank opinion whether I should proceed with full application.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Doctor

Dear Dr. Doctor,

Thanks for the email and CV. Your career track is a bit unusual and the fact that you have not been active in science in the last three years will probably catch the attention of the assessment committee.

I can not tell you whether to apply or not, it has to be your own decision.

Kind regards,

Professor

See? Totally absurd query and deservedly useless response.

Sir Patrick Moore (1923—2012)

Moore was perhaps the last in the great British tradition of significant contributions to science by distinguished amateurs, and was fiercely proud of his amateur status.

Derek McNally

I wonder what academic bureaucrats of today would make of Sir Patrick Moore’ CV if he ever applied for professorship. Moore never went to the university (he famously refused a government grant to study at Cambridge), let alone wrote a Ph.D. thesis. So what. Dennis Barker wrote in The Guardian:

With one exception after his teaching days — his directorship of Armagh Planetarium in Northern Ireland (1965—68) — Moore was never an employee.

Even better.

I first learned about Moore from Англия, a British magazine published (in Russian) in Soviet times. I remember the black and white photo of him by the grand piano, the caption saying that Moore is an accomplished musician possessing perfect pitch. Back then, I thought he was some sort of English eccentric. Many years later, I saw him on the BBC. Yes he was an archetypal English eccentric all right, and amazingly brilliant at that. He joined the RAF during World War II; he met Yuri Gagarin and appeared in Doctor Who. He was the world’s longest-serving TV presenter — and, briefly, the finance minister for the Monster Raving Loony Party. According to Wikipedia, “as a pianist, he once accompanied Albert Einstein playing The Swan by Camille Saint-Saëns on the violin”. He wrote hundreds of books, including the one called Bureaucrats: How to Annoy Them. So I think his application would not be successful.

find your passion and pursue it

From the introductory lecture to the MIT course 3.091, Introduction to Solid State Chemistry by Professor Donald Sadoway (Fall 2010):

Let me begin by saying that 3.091 is the most important class you will take at MIT. It’s true. But, you know, anybody who stands in front of you to lecture should say the same thing about his or her class. If they don’t believe that they shouldn’t be standing in front of you lecturing. The difference is, when I say it, I’m right.

See, I have tenure. So what does that mean? It means you find your passion and pursue it. You don’t waste time on trivia. And that’s what I urge you to do: find your passion and pursue it.

Making safe batteries out of earth-abundant, accessible materials for portable power, ultimately to drive the car with electrons, electric fuel, to eliminate this country’s dependence on imported petroleum — we can do it. How? By inventing. And the way we’re going to invent is to learn the lessons in 3.091 that will give us the chemistry we need to invent a battery that can send that car 250 miles on a single charge, and put it in a show room for the same price as a car with an internal combustion engine. The only thing that stands between that image and where we are today is invention, and the requisite material is right here in this class.

And then, lastly, let’s never forget about dreaming.

What are the origins of chemistry? The ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs refer to khemeia, which was a chemical process for embalming the dead. You know the Egyptians were very fixated on the afterlife. And the chemists were revered in that society — not like here.

Newlands was a musician and he talked about octaves. So if you start here, if this is a diatonic scale, so this is C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. So potassium lies an octave away from sodium. He was ridiculed. They said, have you considered perhaps putting the elements in alphabetical order? They were cruel. Scientists can be very cruel to new ideas.

checking the winning formula

The day when the first of 2012 Nobel Prizes was announced, a short article containing the recipe for winning one of those appeared on the BBC website. Let’s see what we’ve got this year.

Physics
• Serge Haroche, 68, French
• David J. Wineland, 68, American
Chemistry
• Robert J. Lefkowitz, 69, American
• Brian Kobilka, 56, American
Physiology or Medicine
• Sir John B. Gurdon, 79, British
• Shinya Yamanaka, 50, Japanese
Literature
• Mo Yan, 57, Chinese
Peace
• European Union
Economic Sciences
• Alvin E. Roth, 60, American
• Lloyd Shapley, 89, American

If there are deviations from the winning formula, they are neither significant nor surprising. (For example, the formula does not reflect the fact that the prize winners are getting older.) Excluding the EU, we have the average age of 66. Five out of nine winners are Americans. Wineland and Shapley went to Harvard, Lefkowitz and Roth to Columbia, Gurdon to Oxford. Two economists and one physicist sport facial hair. I’ve counted at least five pairs of glasses. And no women.

Too many factors to consider, I say. Last year, Benjamin Jones and Bruce Weinberg published a paper in PNAS where they concentrate just on the age dynamics of Nobel laureates (prizes given between 1901 and 2008 in physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine). It has rather fascinating figures in it.

In chemistry, great achievement by age 40 converges toward 0% by 2000, but it accounted for 66% of cases in 1900.

professor awakens, you fail

Transitions may be the only type of human-like words and phrases that could make mathematical texts accessible for — and, hopefully, even understandable to — humans. On the other hand, in this document dealing with issues of mathematical communication Zajj Daugherty warns:

Be careful with clearly, obviously, and surely, as graders often interpret these connectives to mean that important parts of the problem are being glossed over and that they should therefore read over the surrounding text more diligently.

And you wouldn’t want that. I recall an anecdote about great mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov who for many years was a professor at the famous Department of Mechanics and Mathematics (мехмат) of Moscow State University. Now Kolmogorov normally was snoozing his way through the exams. A successful exam strategy tactics approach was to talk non-stop whilst trying not to wake him up with a careless transition word such as obviously. Otherwise, he would open his eyes and say with a smile: “Очевидно? Докажите!” (“Obviously? Prove it!”)

the end of the world as we know it?

I don’t think so. Not this year anyway. Instead, we have the next best worst £!@#$%* thing. Today, the Spanish government announced its austerity budget. Which, as you may have guessed, is not a good news. Especially for those with even a passing interest in schooling.

The spending on education was not that great in the first place; how cutting it any further can help to plug the hundred-billion-euro hole? I know. One does not choose to be a teacher because it is a well-paid job, right? That means, to save some money, you have to sack thousands of teachers, rather than a dozen or so of bank CEOs.

Will they ever start to learn? That is not very likely. Stupid — I repeat, stupid — austerity measures will not get Spain out of crisis. Far from cutting, they should start investing in education. Furthermore... But I guess I could as well stop here and now: anybody who sometimes takes time off to think can continue the argument.