XPost: sci.electronics.design   
   From: bill.sloman@ieee.org   
      
   On 23/02/2026 12:19 am, J. J. Lodder wrote:   
   > Bill Sloman  wrote:   
   >   
   >> 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.   
   >   
   > There were not many students to begin with.   
   > Most of them had parents who could afford to pay for their studies.   
   > Some poor and obviously very talented boys got scholarships.   
   > Some were adopted by a maecenas who sponsored them.   
   > Women were usually out of luck.   
   >   
   > For numbers: I have seen estimates that in the year 1900   
   > there were about a thousand physicists of all kinds in the whole world,   
   > most of them in Europe.   
   >   
   >> 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.   
   >   
   > A Good Thing.   
   > But I guess that there are more Australian who want to go to Europe   
   > than the other way round, even nowadays,   
      
   I wouldn't bet on it. One of my late wife's colleague professors is from   
   South America (though we'd got to know her in the Netherlands) and   
   another is from South Korea). Australia is well off and politically   
   stable - more so than the US is now.   
      
   The local branch of the IEEE had an Italian professor active on the   
   executive committee (when I was its treasurer), but she's now gone back   
   to IMEC in Belgium.   
      
   > PS,   
   > You arrived here too late to see the best anti-Einstein nutter of all.   
   > (an Australian citizen whose name shall not be mentioned)   
      
   Anti-Einstein nutters are a tedious bunch. Sci.electronics.design has   
   Jan Panteltje who is Dutch. He also fancies the Le Sage theory of gravity.   
      
   --   
   Bill Sloman, Sydney   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)