Blogger: Rob Knop
URL: scienceblogs.com/interactions
First post: January 2006
Who is the blog written by?
Rob Knop, who until last month was an assistant professor of astronomy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, US, researching galaxy formation, evolution and interactions – as the title of his blog suggests. He is now leaving academia to work as a software engineer for Linden Lab, the company that created and runs the online “virtual world” Second Life, which has over eight million registered users.
What topics does the blog cover?
As well as his research area of astronomy, Knop has written angrily and often about the problems faced by researchers attempting to gain tenure at US universities, including a post titled “The astronomy community to Rob Knop: ‘Get out. You aren’t good enough’ “. Knop is also a Christian, and wrote a series of detailed posts about why he believes in God and how he thinks religion fits with modern science.
Who is it aimed at?
In February Knop was invited to join the growing ScienceBlogs collective run by US popular-science magazine Seed, thereby recognizing his talent at communicating astronomy to the layperson. Indeed, Knop has frequently written that teaching and outreach activities are undervalued by the academic system in the US – he found that he was unable to gain tenure at Vanderbilt without first obtaining hard-to-come-by funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), thus prompting his departure from academia.
Why should I read it?
As well as being an excellent communicator of science, Knop’s personal diatribes about his experience of academia make for impassioned, if sometimes uncomfortable, reading. Indeed the “rant” category in Galactic Interactions contains more posts than those on physics or astronomy. However, there is a happy postscript to Knop leaving research. Shortly after announcing his new job, he was awarded a share in the $250,000 Gruber prize for cosmology as one of the members of the Supernova Cosmology Project that in 1998 co-discovered that the expansion of the universe was accelerating. One comment on his blog noted “When you look up ‘ironic timing’ in the dictionary it links to this post.”
How often is it updated?
Once every few days. It remains to be seen how the blog will develop as Knop moves into his new career.
Can you give me a sample quote?
“I’ve had this Sword of Damocles about funding hanging over my head for years. In the last few years, it’s been weighing more and more heavily on me, as I contemplate how competitive NSF funding is, as I hear stories of even ‘good proposals from big shots’ being turned down, as I hear about established and successful full professors finding it difficult to figure out how to keep funding their graduate students…and as I realize that Vanderbilt has a veto criterion for tenure that requires me to compete successfully in this funding rat race.”
