(me) "How many of the Phd's you have turned out in the last decade are today doing their own, original, creative research work?"
(SP) "None of them are."
(me) "Why did they bother?"
(SP) " Sorry, but we are waiting for the dead wood to retire. They'll have to be kept amused until they have gone!"

        Senior Professor  (SP) of a large University Physics Department      1983

David G. Stephenson, F.R.A.S., F.B.I.S.

I always wanted to be a research scientist and the nineteen sixties were an exciting time to be a physics undergraduate in Southampton University on the south coast of England.  Transistors were taking over from the electronic valve (tube), the Space Race was in full swing, and every nation wanted a nuke. I spent my post graduate years a couple of doors along from a laboratory that was being prepared to receive one of the first samples of rock  from the Moon. My own research was a little more prosaic. I spent three years on top of a Yorkshire moor outside Sheffield observing meteors using a radar system copied from the Chain Home stations of the second world war. My contribution was a recording system that used over 800 of the first digital integrated circuits and the programmes to analyze the resulting data.  The system worked and I left Sheffield University as a newly minted Phd in experimental space  physics.

        Alas my timing could not have been worse! All around the world research budgets were declining. Universities were cutting back their academic staff in order to pay for ballooning numbers of managers, and governments wanted research to be relevant to the next election campaign.  The newly minted, cheap, toxic, plastic smell of well managed hi-tech R&D was in the air and university funding was being shunted into profitable research parks.  Foolishly I decided that hi-tech R&D was a passing aberration and spent 25 years wandering the world searching for a career in scientific research. 

                  


Affiliations, Hobbies and associated qualifications:

Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society

Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society

Private Pilot  (Night Rating) (Inactive)

Sailplane Instructor (Inactive),   Chief Flying Instructor,  Saskatoon Soaring  Association 1978

Amateur Radio Operator  VE3PYG



                Excellent cuisine is Cordon Bleu
                Excellent nutrition is a balanced diet
                Excellent management is MacDonald's

  

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