Professors with interesting, quirky websites?
September 19, 2014 8:59 PM   Subscribe

It seems like there's this trend for (usually senior) professors to have a website (usually completely devoid of any CSS) filled with advice to juniors, strong opinions, and notes on very specific topics. Do you know of any?

For example, Philip Greenspun's pages on materialism and Cosma Shalizi's notebook.

I'd like to know because I find reading the 'advice to grad students' pages interesting, and they're often written in a really personal tone and quite fun to read.

(Similar to this previous question, but with less emphasis on a specific topic...except if it's 'grad school advice'.)

Thanks!
posted by spec to Computers & Internet (19 answers total) 106 users marked this as a favorite
 
Cliff Mass is a Seattle hero.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:17 PM on September 19, 2014 [5 favorites]


Best answer: You might like the page of David B. Fankhauser, Professor of Biology and Chemistry at University of Cincinnati - it has extensive information on things like cheese-making, orchids, folk dancing, his travels, astronomical pictures, and others.
posted by Angleton at 9:41 PM on September 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


The Love Lab : Dedicated to Good Science and Self- Aggrandizement. Dr. Milton Love is the professor at the helm. Every link is worth clicking on.
posted by fshgrl at 9:46 PM on September 19, 2014


Best answer: Phil Agre has several of these essays, about 2/3 down that page. His Networking on the Network is also good, but for some reason not on that page
posted by wsquared at 9:54 PM on September 19, 2014


Best answer: Gerard 't Hooft's theoretical physics page is a classic of the genre. Unfortunately the updated version has been prettified.
posted by Standard Orange at 10:00 PM on September 19, 2014




Best answer: "This site is text-positive and defiantly retro (hand-crafted HTML 1.0)." (Prabhakar Ragde)
posted by parudox at 10:49 PM on September 19, 2014 [2 favorites]


Best answer: Doron Zeilberger's opinions page. Many are interesting perspectives on academics and whatever, and there just aren't words for some of them.
posted by ktkt at 12:44 AM on September 20, 2014


Best answer: Ravi Vakil's advice page sometimes gets cited in math circles. He also had done links to similar pages at the bottom
posted by matildatakesovertheworld at 12:45 AM on September 20, 2014


Yale economics professors Ray Fair, Robert Schiller (recent Nobel winner), Rick Levin (Yale's last president) and a few others all lived on the same street in the late 80s and their kids (including Fair's daughter Emily Oster, who is a successful economist herself) published a very good neighborhood newsletter which you can see here. It's kind of fun to skim and get a glimpse into their home lives.
posted by acidic at 1:16 AM on September 20, 2014


Best answer: This sounds like Jeff Erickson's webpage. I couldn't find advice for grad students, but I found this advice to get into grad school with a low GPA.
posted by yaymukund at 1:30 AM on September 20, 2014




I have always really liked Achille Varzi's negative bio.
posted by Lutoslawski at 7:41 AM on September 20, 2014 [1 favorite]


I love this account of Harriet Fell's Paris-Brest-Paris ride. She carried a whole roast chicken in her handlebar bag!

(Harriet Fell was married to legendary bicycle mechanic and author Sheldon Brown.)
posted by research monkey at 10:27 AM on September 20, 2014


I'd like to know because I find reading the 'advice to grad students' pages interesting, and they're often written in a really personal tone and quite fun to read.

Jason Eisner's page is known for this. Direct link to advice page. (Disclosure, he's a colleague of mine.)
posted by advil at 10:31 AM on September 20, 2014


I think the website of John McCarthy, a now-deceased computer science professor at Stanford (and inventor of the Lisp programming language), is right up your alley. Complete with an "under construction" icon. Sigh.
posted by A dead Quaker at 12:59 PM on September 20, 2014 [1 favorite]


William Harris' page on Humanities and Classics
posted by thelonius at 4:43 PM on September 20, 2014


Matt Might's Illustrated Guide to a PhD. Many other entries on his blog would also qualify.
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:52 AM on September 24, 2014




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