The latest young cosmologist to officially ascend to the inner sanctum of the ivory tower is Ignacy Sawicki, who successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis yesterday. (Some of us are less grudging with our congratulations than others.) I swooped into Chicago for the event, then swooped right back to LA last night, from which I will swoop over to Washington DC later today. Many miles were accumulated, but I had to be there for the defense, otherwise Wayne Hu totally would have claimed credit for being Iggy’s advisor, just because they wrote more papers together.
In just a few short years Iggy has written an impressive series of in-depth papers on the possibility of modifying general relativity to explain the acceleration of the universe.
- Cosmological structure evolution and CMB anisotropies in DGP braneworlds, with S.M. Carroll, astro-ph/0510364.
- Near-Horizon Solution for DGP Perturbations, with Y.-S. Song and W. Hu, astro-ph/0606285.
- Large-Scale Tests of the DGP Model, with Y.-S. Song and W. Hu, astro-ph/0606286.
- Modified-Source Gravity and Cosmological Structure Formation, with S.M. Carroll, A. Silvestri, and M. Trodden, astro-ph/0607458.
- The Large Scale Structure of f(R) Gravity, with Y.-S. Song and W. Hu, astro-ph/0610532.
- Stability of Cosmological Solution in f(R) Models of Gravity, with W. Hu, astro-ph/0702278.
- Models of f(R) Cosmic Acceleration that Evade Solar-System Tests, with W. Hu, arXiv:0705.1158.
In the Fall he’ll be taking his post-Einstein sensibilities to the socialist enclave in Greenwich Village, where such things are considered politically acceptable. Congratulations!
Congratulations Iggy!
Looking forward to seeing more of you in New York City this September! We should totally get some more stuff going between the Harlem side and the Greenwich side of NYC.
You are also buying the beer of course.
Many congratulations Iggy. We’ll have you for a talk when you’re settled.
Congrats to Iggy ! Sean you forgot to mention how crowded the event was 🙂 . The room was fully packed during the defense and some of us had to stand outside the room and listen to the talk. I think it was the most crowded defense I have attended at UC.
Hope he starts posting here soon – I’d like to be able to understand his ideas, but I won’t be able to unless someone translates them into layman’s english.
Congratulations to Dr.Sawicki!! Now that he’s a Ph.D., maybe he needs to graduate to a moniker that carries more gravitas than Iggy. That name makes him sound like a Peanuts character. What about Nash?
Thanks very much Sean: for coming down yesterday, for setting me off on that first DGP project, for providing many an insightful comment and idea and putting things in perspective, and for the many gems of advice which ended it up with my being able to get this far. It will certainly feel much lonelier in the future.
Poor guy… I bet the Dr. Hu jokes never end. 🙂
Congratulations also from somewhat bewildered nonetheless proud father 😉
Congratulations !
We will catch up with you when you move to the right coast ( and the beer is on us, of course).