Interview with an Astronomer

Today, David and I conducted an interview with Richard Ellis, an astrophysics professor at the California Institute of Technology and my adviser. Professor Ellis didn't require much in the way of guiding questions; he covered a lot on his own, so instead of writing this up in a question-answer format, I'm going to try to write up his stories based on my notes. [I may interject every now and then, but rest assured my statements will be safely walled off behind brackets. Other than that, all that follows should be a paraphrase of Prof. Ellis, as transcribed from my notes. I may write my reflection on the interview in another post]



To start things off, Richard Ellis wanted to be an astronomer since he was about 6 years old. Upon reading a book about astronomy, he was hooked, developing an interest he would continue to have for the rest of his life. This interest continued throughout high school, and consequently, for college he decided to look into universities with undergraduate astrophysics programs.

At the time, England had a grand total of 4 universities with such programs. Most people who would end up in astronomy studied physics or math for their undergraduate degree, only moving into astronomy for grad school.

Not-yet-Dr. Ellis decided to study at London University, which featured six people in astronomy in his class, in a program taught by professional astronomers. As his studies progressed, his professors encouraged him to continue his studies in a PhD program in graduate school. A career in research was considered the highest goal among soon-to-be-graduates in science at the time; this has been somewhat supplanted by finance and other high-paying fields in recent times. Furthermore, Dr. Ellis' senior research project inspired him to continue his studies (especially realizing that people could get paid to study astronomy, something he enjoyed immensely).

So, soon-to-be-Dr. Ellis began graduate studies at Oxford. During this time, he was somewhat disillusioned by the difficulty of the work, and by his lack of interest in his research project, which involved determining the composition of the Sun through the study of the spectral lines of heavy elements. [When he was describing this, I actually thought the topic was kind of interesting, though maybe it wouldn't be fun to actually run the experiments, which involved testing lots of spectral lines for things like titanium gas.]

At one point, he actually decided to quit astronomy, and applied for positions at IBM, Nature, and an advertising firm. But then, at the last minute, he changed his mind; he stayed on to complete his PhD, and then moved into a postdoctoral position at Durham University, though he notes that this actually offered a little over half the pay he would have made, had he taken the advertising job.

He stayed at Durham for 19 years, transitioning from postdoc to professor. Then in 1993, he was invited to be a professor at Cambridge, where he stayed until moving to Caltech in 1999.

[Having concluded his biography, Prof. Ellis moved on to talk about some aspects of academia and research, like funding.] The search for funding for research projects can be constant, and it has gotten markedly worse in the past 5 years. Postdocs and research equipment can be very expensive, so some professors can be applying for grants and funding virtually all the time. Sometimes, postdoctoral or professorial positions will come with a "start-up package," an initial sum of money that can cover funding for a few years.

Good researchers aren't just good at collecting data: they have to be able to conceive an important, feasible idea. In astronomy, there is a danger of collecting a lot of data to no overall point, lacking a sort of "big picture" goal. Data collection for a good goal will have the potential to push back the frontier of understanding, rather than simply amass more data for its own sake.

Also, there are other choices researchers must make. If they have PhD students, are they generous enough to share ideas with them? That is to say, if a professor has an idea for a project, is he willing to "donate" that idea for someone else's paper or thesis? Professors may also have to choose between focusing intently on one specific project or area of research, or multitasking between many projects and areas.

[On the differences between academia in the US and the UK] In the UK, there tends to be more camaraderie between universities, since they're all part of the same system, whereas in the US, there tends to be more competition and rivalry [Can you think of any examples?]. Also, access to facilities may be very different, with many US institutions, such as Caltech, having very good access to observatories like Palomar. The situation in Europe is, however, dramatically improving, especially in the UK, Holland, and Germany.