Andy Lawrence’s first day
The first day of my PhD (October 1976) had several memorable short episodes, all involving Mike Watson.
- Mike Watson took me to group coffee. Ken Pounds came in and said “Have you shown him his first photon yet ?”. I stood proud and said “I’ve seen photons before”, to which Ken replied “Not ones as big as these you haven’t, son”
- Then Mike took me to the computer centre to get my username. “Whats your initials ?” said the man in the office. “AL” says I. “Thats no good” says he, “we need three letters. I know, how about AXL ?”. Quick as a flash, I said “How did you know my secret middle name was Xerxes ?” Mike thought this was most suitable, and pretty soon everyone in the group referred to me as Xerxes or Axl.
- Next up was a meeting with Brin Cooke, who gave me some work to do. Then I went off to lunch with Mike, who said “So, what are you working on ?”. “Umm… Brin has me looking at the data for something called Centaurus A ??”. “Ah yes”, says Mike, “good old 1322-427″. Wow, I thought, he knows every X-ray source in the sky. I’ll never be as good as him …
So AXL, in the end you couldn’t really handle the big photons, and so slipped off to the ROE !
A little later in your student years I remember you looking under your desk (in a very theatrical way) for the Universe’s missing mass just to amuse a new student being shown around!