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I didn't know that 'acknowledgment' has an implicit reluctance concealed within it:
'acknowledge implies the reluctant disclosure of something one might have kept secret (he acknowledged that the child is his)'
....Webster
Ha!
The Research Scholar's flamboyant start-up:
"It is a great pleasure to acknowledge..."
translates to:
"It has been a sustained pain in the arse to work under my Guide but for whose misguidance and nitpicking, this thesis would have been completed within two splendid years and would have been crisper and sharper"
Acknowledgments come in rainbow colors starting from the hilarious:
"But for the advent of my luscious wife and then our (unplanned) lovely kid, this thesis would have been written up a decade ago,
...vivaham vidya nashanam, santhanam sarvanashanam
And then there is this tongue-in-cheek declaration from that RS whose Official Guide X has been busy globe-trotting drumming up custom while actual help was got from the post-doc Y of some other Prof Z:
"I thank Dr Y for his indispensable and invaluable help, and Professor X for being kindly cooperative..."
TRR (who went to USC for his glorious Ph D around 1989) did his M Sc Project with me on Edwin Taylor's Spacetime Software. But he had an unequal tussle with Prof KVR from Day 1 of his First Year when he started asking indelicate questions in the Class Room.
And TRR was avenged by being asked to keep standing for an entire lecture hour of KVR just because he was 5 minutes late, discussing his project work with me. By then KVR however rose to be HoD. When TRR approached me for permission to write up his thesis, I smilingly asked him not to forget the default Acknowledgment to the HoD. He bristled and shot back:
"What for?"
and I had to tell him that HoDs can in principle have a great nuisance value if they are displeased....I mean what is wrong in pleasing and propitiating an innocent soul after tormenting him for 5 years?
While I was writing up that Joint Paper with TRR for AJP, I told Edwin that the Title of our Paper on his pioneering Relativity Software contains his name. He demurred and wrote back that it would be too embarrassing to find himself on the Title of a Paper in a Journal for which he was an Editor long ago, and that a mention in a significant way in the body of the paper would do.
So, body is different from head and the tail!
SDM had this fixation that he should have at least one independent Paper every year lest folks should suspect he is bloodsucking his co-workers. So, he was working on his own Paper on biaxial crystals while I was working on related problems suggested by him. By then I won his confidence and he showed me the Manuscript of his Paper that he sent out to Annals of Physics (NY).
I then pointed out that his 'generalized uniaxiality condition' must appear as a Section-Head than in the text obscurely. He demurred and said that the so-called 'condition' of his relates to the particular choice of coordinates and is not a feature of the crystal. I opposed him and said it is quite independent of the choice of coordinates and is a feature of the crystal class itself.
He then asked:
"Do you mean to say that it is a minor discovery of mine?"
And I had to tell him:
"It is a fairly major discovery of yours"
and showed him how. We then parted but after an hour he was knocking the door of my digs in our Faculty Hostel. And upon my opening the door, he entered, kept his heavy trade-mark bag on the floor and glumly uttered:
"What all you said and I agreed to is WRONG"
I then had to ask him to be seated and show my detailed calculations to him. He heaved a huge sigh of relief but turned glum again saying:
"In that case I have to acknowledge you in my independent Paper!"
I assured him it wasn't needed because after all I was his own student. He shook his head this way and that and when the proofs arrived, he inserted a handsome Acknowledgment and showed it to me and asked:
"Do you think this will do or should I make it stronger?"
"The most respected Professor gps"
All she got was a handsome Acknowledgment in the Revised Version of that Paper of mine in AJP.
...Posted by Ishani
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'acknowledge implies the reluctant disclosure of something one might have kept secret (he acknowledged that the child is his)'
....Webster
Ha!
The Research Scholar's flamboyant start-up:
"It is a great pleasure to acknowledge..."
translates to:
"It has been a sustained pain in the arse to work under my Guide but for whose misguidance and nitpicking, this thesis would have been completed within two splendid years and would have been crisper and sharper"
Acknowledgments come in rainbow colors starting from the hilarious:
"But for the advent of my luscious wife and then our (unplanned) lovely kid, this thesis would have been written up a decade ago,
...vivaham vidya nashanam, santhanam sarvanashanam
And then there is this tongue-in-cheek declaration from that RS whose Official Guide X has been busy globe-trotting drumming up custom while actual help was got from the post-doc Y of some other Prof Z:
"I thank Dr Y for his indispensable and invaluable help, and Professor X for being kindly cooperative..."
TRR (who went to USC for his glorious Ph D around 1989) did his M Sc Project with me on Edwin Taylor's Spacetime Software. But he had an unequal tussle with Prof KVR from Day 1 of his First Year when he started asking indelicate questions in the Class Room.
And TRR was avenged by being asked to keep standing for an entire lecture hour of KVR just because he was 5 minutes late, discussing his project work with me. By then KVR however rose to be HoD. When TRR approached me for permission to write up his thesis, I smilingly asked him not to forget the default Acknowledgment to the HoD. He bristled and shot back:
"What for?"
and I had to tell him that HoDs can in principle have a great nuisance value if they are displeased....I mean what is wrong in pleasing and propitiating an innocent soul after tormenting him for 5 years?
While I was writing up that Joint Paper with TRR for AJP, I told Edwin that the Title of our Paper on his pioneering Relativity Software contains his name. He demurred and wrote back that it would be too embarrassing to find himself on the Title of a Paper in a Journal for which he was an Editor long ago, and that a mention in a significant way in the body of the paper would do.
So, body is different from head and the tail!
SDM had this fixation that he should have at least one independent Paper every year lest folks should suspect he is bloodsucking his co-workers. So, he was working on his own Paper on biaxial crystals while I was working on related problems suggested by him. By then I won his confidence and he showed me the Manuscript of his Paper that he sent out to Annals of Physics (NY).
I then pointed out that his 'generalized uniaxiality condition' must appear as a Section-Head than in the text obscurely. He demurred and said that the so-called 'condition' of his relates to the particular choice of coordinates and is not a feature of the crystal. I opposed him and said it is quite independent of the choice of coordinates and is a feature of the crystal class itself.
He then asked:
"Do you mean to say that it is a minor discovery of mine?"
And I had to tell him:
"It is a fairly major discovery of yours"
and showed him how. We then parted but after an hour he was knocking the door of my digs in our Faculty Hostel. And upon my opening the door, he entered, kept his heavy trade-mark bag on the floor and glumly uttered:
"What all you said and I agreed to is WRONG"
I then had to ask him to be seated and show my detailed calculations to him. He heaved a huge sigh of relief but turned glum again saying:
"In that case I have to acknowledge you in my independent Paper!"
I assured him it wasn't needed because after all I was his own student. He shook his head this way and that and when the proofs arrived, he inserted a handsome Acknowledgment and showed it to me and asked:
"Do you think this will do or should I make it stronger?"
dekha hoy nai chokshu melia
ghor hote shudhu dui pa felia
ekti dhaner shisher upor
ekti shishirbindu ||
for me it ought to read:
dekha hoyeche!
ghor hote shudhu dui pa felia
ekti dhaner shisher upor
ekti shishirbindu ||
for me it ought to read:
dekha hoyeche!
At times, an honest Acknowledgment could pull you down by a Grade, as it happened with Sumita Das, another Project Student of mine and one of the best. She took as her Seminar Topic my Flickering Bulb Paradox Manuscript, worked it out, and presented it in a Board in which I wasn't invited as an Examiner.
DB reported to me that she was hassled:
DB reported to me that she was hassled:
"Thought Experiments are useless"
...only thoughtless ones can get Ph Ds ;)
And she was finally asked:
And she was finally asked:
"Whose idea is this?"
And in her childish innocence she bowed her head reverentially and said:
"The most respected Professor gps"
All she got was a handsome Acknowledgment in the Revised Version of that Paper of mine in AJP.
...Posted by Ishani
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