The humanities and the sciences differ all over the world, but at Oxford the gulf is especially wide. Science students and faculty spend their time mainly in departments, while humanities people are mainly in colleges. With a wife in English Literature, I see this up close and personal.

And now the gulf is to be widened further. The university has long had far better libraries for the humanities than for the sciences. But now it has been decided that scientists do not use books, and the Radcliffe Science Library will be merged into a new science-oriented Parks College. Most of the books will be shipped away to a site in another city.

One could take two opposing views of this transition. Lovers of the past might say, Oxford’s already dim science library provision is being made dimmer. Apostles of the future might say, the difference between humanities and sciences is a real one, and Oxford is showing world leadership in optimizing both sides independently. I’m in the first camp, but I realize I may be mistaken.

[12 June 2019]

I went to WHSmith this morning to buy a magazine. They’ve moved! Magazines are no longer in the entrance, but tucked away out of sight in the back. The entrance is now given over to greeting cards.

But not entirely. Along with the greeting cards, WHSmith now devotes its prime retail area to plastic water bottles. I saw stacks, rows, cases of 15, more cases, more rows, here there and around every corner. I counted. As of 8:30 this morning, WHSmith Oxford has 1570 plastic water bottles on display.

[14 June 2019]

On April 1 André and Marí Weideman and I spent a few hours in a hide around dawn, then a few more hours in the Stanley and Livingstone game reserve around sunset. In what will surely be my most remarkable wildlife day ever we saw

baboon, black rhinoceros, buffalo, bush buck, crocodile, elephant, giraffe, hippopotamus, impala, kudu, leopard tortoise, lion, squirrel, warthog, zebra

and

bee eater, double-banded sand grouse, drongo, emerald dove, egret, Egyptian goose, fish eagle, francolin, grey heron, grey lourie, guinea fowl, hammerhead, hornbill, lapwing, marabou, open-billed stork, pied kingfisher, red-billed oxpecker, strand kiewiet, thickhead, turtle dove, weaver, white-headed vulture.

[12 June 2019]

Numerical analysts played a leading role in creating the field of computer science in the 1960s. There were Gautschi and Rice at Purdue, Forsythe and Golub at Stanford, Bauer in Munich, Stiefel and Rutishauser in Zurich, Bennett in Sydney, Fox at Oxford, Gear at Illinois, Dahlquist in Stockholm,….

Half a century on, there have been 70 winners of the Turing Award, computer science’s highest honor. How many have been numerical analysts? The answer is three, if you include Richard Hamming (1968). Wilkinson (1970) and Kahan (1989) were the other two, 30+ years ago.

[4 June 2019]