De sleutel in een bewijs

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Eureka!
members of the department. As the department gets larger and
larger, like Leiden, there can be a tendency that the people
who work there are just saturated by their own sub field. I
will give an example of this. I was a post doc at Harvard, at
the Centre for Astrophysics, for two years. After that I went
to be a post doc at Princeton. At a meeting in Princeton I met
somebody and I asked him where was he working, and he
answered: ‘I work in the Harvard Centre for Astrophysics’. I
had no recollection of seeing him before and likewise I was
completely unfamiliar to him, because we worked on different
floors of a large building. So I think there is a benefit
from smallness and you become more all-rounded and more a
generalist in your area.’
Almost all of your publications are in the field of ISM.
How did your interest in this area start?
‘Why I am working in the ISM is entirely an accident. I
believe a lot of life happens by accident and I benefitted from
a lot of good luck. After I graduated in physics I didn't know
one area of physics I wished to concentrate on. I went to
Cornell university for graduate study and I was offered a job
in a laboratory in a solid state physics group, where I worked
for a couple of years. At the time, there were very few jobs in
science: many PhD’s ended up driving taxis because there was
nothing else to do. The project I worked on was unsuccessful,
so I switched to astrophysics. I talked to prof. Salpeter, who
was a very famous astrophysicist, because I hoped to work
on relativistic accretion disks. But he discovered that I had a
background in solid state physics, and since he had an interest
in interstellar dust he decided I had to work in that area.
After all, he was the great Salpeter, I was just a humble
graduate student, so of course I obeyed. But this gave me the
opportunity to work on a large variety of fascinating
problems.’
So you did not actually study astronomy?
‘I never followed an astronomy course as an undergraduate,
or even as a beginning graduate student. It was quite embarrassing
when I switched to astrophysics, and someone in a
graduate course was talking about the main sequence and I
didn’t know what it was. I knew some astronomy but lacked
many fundamentals: I learned them later.’
Eureka! Universiteit Leiden
The Oort lecture 2009
You were born in India, Calcutta. How was your
childhood there and when did you move to the States?
‘Actually I don’t remember, I left India when I was two years
old. My father had to move often for his job: after India we
lived three years in the US, three years in Brazil and nine
years in Mexico. In my last year of high school we moved
back to the States. I’m actually really happy with all this
moving: it gave me a more international view than most
Americans; the US is quite an inward looking country.’
You served in the US Peace Corps in Ghana from 1969
to 1971 as a teacher in physics and maths. How did
you end up there?
‘The Peace Corps started during the years of president
Kennedy. Americans had the opportunity to serve and provide
services in developing countries as volunteers, depending on
their own skills. For me, this was teaching physics and maths.
I think I did some small account of good for the people there.’
Did you like teaching already?
‘Well, it was the time of the Vietnam war and I was a 21 year
old healthy male. After my graduation I wasn’t sure whether I
wanted to become an academic, but I didn’t wish to be drafted
into the army. The Peace Corps was the perfect opportunity to
defer my interaction with the military, and to see what I
wanted to do with my life. Teaching persuaded me that I
wanted to learn more, that I liked learning. I still like teaching
very much: to communicate science to people who want to
learn is fun. But it turned out I love research even more.
Fortunately, the astronomy department in Princeton is similar
to Leiden: one can do both teaching and research.’