This page badly needs updating; you probably want the page on my personal website instead: www.planet4589.org
Scientific Interests:
Other Interests:
Eponymous minor planet: (4589) McDowell
My first astronomy job came when I left high school and
worked for six months at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, at
that time located in Sussex. After a math degree at Churchill College,
Cambridge and a summer job at Royal Observatory, Edinburgh,
I began a Ph.D. at the
Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge
(the real Cambridge, I mean). This turned out to be a work
of fiction about stars that never existed and predicted a
submillimeter background radiation that was later discovered
and shortly thereafter retracted. I decided it was time to
work on things one could really observe, and went to do a
postdoc at Jodrell Bank. After a brief flirtation with the
microwave background I got interested in the physics of
quasars and have been stuck trying to figure them out ever
since. I came to CfA in 1988 as a postdoc, escaped to
Huntsville, Alabama in 1991 but the lure of
Harvard Square
was too strong and I've been back here since 1992.
For fun, take a look at The Observatory Pinafore
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