Robin Milner is probably the most influential researcher in concurrency theory, the research area in which I work. He has won the Turing award (the Nobel prize for computer science), and made decisive contributions in several areas of computing; in all of them his ideas have had both theoretical and practical impact.
Milner is 75 years-old now. He continues to work, more actively than what one could imagine. He has recently finished a book on his latest group of theories, one that attempts to provide a general formulation for a number of complicated phenomena. My impression is that such theories have had much less impact than his previous work. I personally do not like the theories; I find them very hard to understand. I guess I am not alone in that perception. One gets the impression that Milner knows that, and that he is most interested in making his theories more accessible.
The other day, by mistake, Milner sent a private email to a public mailing list. The email was intended to one of the chairs of a forthcoming conference: in his email Milner was sending very well in advance his slides for his keynote talk. In his very refined English (which we all have come to appreciate by reading his books and papers), Milner expressed his concern about the lack of a projector in the conference, also pointing out that he should be very busy over the coming weeks. Referring to the slides, Milner wrote: "You may be shocked to receive them so early." Pure Milner style.
That email from Milner got me thinking. I was indeed shocked, but not because of the slides. I was shocked to realize that Milner in 75 years was still concerned about some of the annoying issues related to research, such as writing slides and doing arrangements for conferences. Then I realized: I do not want to be 75 and be worried about research! Granted, I am not a genius-like researcher as Milner is, and most likely when I get old I won't feel the urgency of making a last, extraordinary contribution to science (as Milner probably feels). Even if one feels like doing research till the end (literally), that would certainly be disastrous way of ending your life. I mean, there are so many wonderful things in life so as to be concerned till the end about research. At that age, I certainly expect to be worried about hobbies, family, and health (in that order).
2 comments:
I'm happy that you've reached such an insight. Like any other job, research IS just a job. Some ingenious people have a forceful drive to move forward the world, and in some branches of research such as engineering, micro biology, and nano technology they may even have a reason to hope for such important advances. Alas, in you area Jorge, theoretical computer science with ugly concurrency models, there is no such hope. All you have is the joy of doing something fun, which I hope you still think it is.
Morale: Go for the girl. ;-)
Sooooo true :)
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