I
got my Ph.D in astronomy from Harvard University back in 1982,
and since then I have been employed at the Space Sciences Division
of the Naval Research Laboratory, BDM International, the Applied
Research Corporation, and most recently Hughes STX – all
located in the Greater Washington, D.C. area. My dream, as for
many young astronomers, was to get a tenured position in astronomy
at some college or university, but that option never materialized
for me. I have since turned my creative energies in public education
towards writing over 15 articles in magazines such as ASTRONOMY
and SKY AND TELESCOPE, and authoring several books. I have written
4 complete book manuscripts during the last 6 years, but so far
have not been able to get a single publisher to publish them.
At the still-alive-and-kicking age of 44, I continue to be optimistic
about both my professional research career and my educational
work, despite the constant chipping away at the funding by Congress
for basic research in this country. For more on this, see my GUIDE
BOOK on astronomy, and the appropriate essays on research life.
Recently I was interviewed for an electronic magazine and here
are the questions I was asked and my replies:
So, why
is your job so interesting?
Because I study the universe! I get up each morning, and come
home for dinner, but for 40 hours every week I get to think
about and study some small corner of the universe. And in my
mind, I am transported a million light years outside my body.
Were
you always interested in this line of work?
Yes, except
for some bouts with dinosaurs and chemistry before the age of
10. Since then, everything I have taken up as a hobby has been
in support of astronomy as my passion. Science fiction reading,
electronics, writing, photography. About the last one, I still
have a habit of setting my camera focus at infinity when taking
family photos. Even as a Boy Scout, it was only the means for
me as an urbanite to escape into the country to see the night
sky in all its glory.
Who
or what is your inspiration?
My inspiration
is the entire physical universe, and the wonderment of how well
the forces and matter all stir together in just the right balances
to make stars, planets and life possible. And that it all follows
simple, comprehensible patterns and laws which you can uncover
and understand IF you simply bother to take the time to study
them. Non-scientists do not do this, and that is why the physical
world often seems so ad hoc and mysterious to them. So far as
human inspiration is concerned, I do not have a single person
or scientist that I consciously try to emulate as a heroic figure.
The mistake we make in this society is to insist that children
HAVE to have hero figures to look up to, rather than follow
their own hearts and minds.
How
do you see the 90s work ethic crunching your lifestyle?
My work
is more intense. With enormous amounts of information being
dumped online into public archives every month, you sometimes
"seize up" as 10 different ideas go through your head
about what to investigate next. But you only have 5 working
days to prioritize and extract meaning from it all. Most of
the new astronomical data you hear about is stuff I never get
the chance to look at professionally. Too much to do, too little
time .
What
is the next mountain you hope to climb?
Olympus
Mons on Mars.
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How
is your job changing?
What will it be like 10 years from now?
I now
get to spend more time in public education. Since getting out
of graduate school 15 years ago, and never getting an offer
to teach as a "day job," all of my education works
has been in writing popular articles and doing adult education
courses. Now, I have finally found a way to make education a
big part of my day job as a 'contractor'. 10 years from now,
I expect I will be doing about the same as what I am doing now,
but worrying less about loosing my job in a year. As a contract
astronomer for 15 years, this temporary way of living has become
so entrenched in how I do science and how I think about my career,
that it has been impossible to think of long term research projects,
or plan my professional life over more than 2-3 years. I think
this is slowly changing.
How
has the Internet affected your profession?
I have
been on the Internet for over 10 years. Most of this time was
using email and FTP, but the single biggest change has been
in the explosion of professional resources now available such
as data archives. Now that NASA is committed to putting real
data online immediately after the satellite/spacecraft get it,
every astronomer has nearly instant access to new data. This
has increased the pace of research enormously, and for many
of us, we no longer need to worry about not getting observing
proposals accepted to get our own data. We can often use what
is already online to do some of our research. As for education,
it is now a whole new ball game since we have decided that the
Internet is now the new godsend for educating our children.
I hope this new experiment works, because we are sure investing
lots of money into it so that every poor urban school has a
spiffy, expensive, high-tech link to the web.
What's
your favorite web site and why?
I view
the entire WWW as a single web site, but the Babylon V Lurkers
Area is my favorite 'room'. I love the series, the actors and
actresses, and the story line...one of the finest pieces of
science fiction I have 'read' in a very long time.
If
your job were a song, what would it be?
Well...each
decade seems to have its own in my book. In the 1960's it was
Spanky and Our Gang's "I'd Like to get to know you"
when I was a kid trying to fit in. In the 1970's it was Cool
and the Gang's "Summer Madness" or the Nitty Gritty
Dirt Band's "Reminiscing" while I was in college and
graduate school. There are lots of others. The 1980's is a big
jumble of favorites, but I have not paid any attention to Rock
and Roll since 1988 or so.
What's
your professional culture like?
Work habits?
Pretty
bleak and gloomy by most people's assessment. It is a solitary
job. You work mostly alone in an office with a computer terminal.
You have occasional hallway chats with people on the same floor,
and once a week you MIGHT all get together for a 'bag lunch'
to hear someone give a 30-minute talk about some topic. A few
times a year you go to national meetings or to observatories.
Meetings can be fun because you get to meet old friends from
grad school, or new collaborators. Observatory trips are terribly
exciting and usually the high point of your year as you make
the actual discoveries you will then investigate back at the
office for the next year or more. We all dress very casual;
jeans, sneakers, shorts, and other fashion elements depending
on your age and status. I know of no astronomers except those
over 60, that wear suits and ties. We set our own office hours,
we come in and leave when we please, but usually work more than
40 hours a week even with this schedule, except if we have families.
I never work a minute longer than 40 hours because my family
life is more important to me than my professional life.
The "culture" itself...well...there are 6,500 astronomers
in this country. They come from the cohort of the brightest
students you ever met in your math and science classes in high
school and college. Still, with few exceptions, astronomers
are far from being nerds. They are highly talented, many are
amateur musicians, but there are so few of us that we have almost
no sense of being a part of a larger group like lawyers or engineers.
This makes for professional isolation and the profound feeling
of being an autonomous individual, going it alone, but having
one [heck] of a fun time with your studies.
Why
do you do what you do, and how do you see it affecting the greater
world?
I am compelled
to do what I do...teaching and research...by a profound sense
of wonderment about the physical world. It is a childlike wonderment
that I have managed to shield in this area from the cynicism
of adolescence and adulthood that is so rampant in today's society.
We are all children at heart, and for scientists and astronomers,
we get to hang onto the pure wonderment and enthusiasm of childhood
a lot longer than in many other professions. It is the battery
that drives us to ask 'silly questions' and to make momentous
discoveries from time to time, because as adults we also know
how to go about finding answers to the questions that are still
posed by the child within us. What I do affects the world by
letting meaning and light shine a little more brightly and deeper
into the recesses of our ignorance. Humans have many prejudices,
and most do not have the time or inclination to understand how
the physical world operates. My profession is that collective
aspect of society that is assigned to search for answers to
questions that most people do not have the time or capacity
to answer. In finding answers and uncovering new questions,
I help to make our world a more comfortable and less mysterious
and frightening place to live and raise a family.
The preceding
biography originally appears on Sten Odenwald's web site, http://www2.ari.net/home/odenwald/vita.html.
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