XPost: sci.physics.relativity   
   From: bill.sloman@ieee.org   
      
   On 22/02/2026 12:58 am, J. J. Lodder wrote:   
   > Bill Sloman  wrote:   
   >   
   >> On 21/02/2026 9:19 pm, J. J. Lodder wrote:   
   >>> Bill Sloman  wrote:   
   > [-]   
   >>>> It helps if they are publishable in a high impact journal.   
   >>>> When I was a graduate student one of the lecturers kept his students   
   >>>> busy publishing papers on the properties of the simpler conpounds of   
   >>>> technicium - the lightest element that hasn't got a stable isotope. He   
   >>>> had contacts in the reactor business that let him get hold of enough of   
   >>>> it to do that kid of work. The results got published in mior league   
   >>>> journals.   
   >>>   
   >>> Minor league professors tend to have minor league students,   
   >>> who may become in their turn minor league professors.   
   >>> So it goes, in this, the best of all possible worlds.   
   >>>   
   >>> Conversely, great names tend to have connections with other great names.   
   >>> Books have been written about it,   
   >>> like on 'heritability' of Nobel prizes.   
   >>> There is a nature versus nurture problem here.   
   >>   
   >> Students vary a lot. The nuture problem is about putting the good ones   
   >> where they will do well, and some great names were good at doing that   
   >>   
   >>> One may speculate that the better students   
   >>> tend to move out to more promising places,   
   >>   
   >> I've seen a bit of that.   
   >>   
   >>> or that great professors may bring out the best in their students.   
   >>   
   >> They tend to send them on to places where their particular skills will   
   >> be appreciated, and to get students and post-docs from acquaintances who   
   >> think that particular students would do well with them.   
   >   
   > Here, at SPR, some of the great lights may tell you   
   > that it is all a conspiracy of Einstein-worshippers.   
      
   Conspiracy theory nutters don't go in for realistic abuse.   
      
   >> You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but a bad supervisor can   
   >> wreck a pontential silk purse.   
   >   
   > In the olden days, pre-WWII, students tended to travel a lot,   
   > moving between universities, to take courses from reputed professors.   
   > Letters of recommendation played an important part.   
      
   Those with the resources to pay for it did. There weren't many of them.   
      
   Laurence Bragg was one of them, but he did travel with his family.   
      
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Bragg   
      
   > Americans and Australians with the good luck of having a scholarship   
   > likewise made European tours, of a few months in several places.   
   >   
   > Nowadays there are the Erasmus scholarships and for that,   
   > but that is EU only,   
   > (those dumb Brits locked themselves out of it)   
      
   There's a memorial travel grant for my wife that offers that to one   
   graduate student every year at the University of Western Sydney where   
   she was a professor when she died.   
      
   --   
   Bill Sloman, Sydney   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)