Abstract
This invited memoire describes my fortunate life, which has been enriched by meeting many wonderful people. The story starts at home and university, and continues with accounts of St Andrews and trips to the USA, together with musings on the book "Solar MHD". The nature and results of collaborations with key people from abroad and with students is mentioned at length. Finally, other important aspects of my life are mentioned briefly before wrapping up.
Highlights
As I look back over my career, the main feeling is one of gratitude for having been blessed by a wonderfully supportive family, having met so many marvellous colleagues and scientific friends, and having been inspired by such interesting research.When thinking of life as a university teacher and researcher, I recall the saying of Confucius, “Choose the profession you love, and you won’t have to work a day in your life”
He completed his Ph.D. with Karl Schindler in Bochum in 1997 and led a temporary group there on topological fluid dynamics from 1998 to 2004. He visited us for three months in 2002 and was an 18-month visiting researcher in St Andrews from April 2004 and given a lectureship in Dundee from 2005. This has been supplemented by permanent positions for two fantastic former research students of mine, David Pontin from 2007 and Antonia Wilmot-Smith from 2010, who are revolutionising our understanding of magnetic topology and reconnection
One example of this was the paper on coronal heating by phase mixing, where together we realised that there was an elegant way of treating standing or propagating waves in a simple unidirectional magnetic field whose strength varies with position (Heyvaerts and Priest, 1983)
Summary
As I look back over my career, the main feeling is one of gratitude for having been blessed by a wonderfully supportive family, having met so many marvellous colleagues and scientific friends, and having been inspired by such interesting research. When thinking of life as a university teacher and researcher, I recall the saying of Confucius, “Choose the profession you love, and you won’t have to work a day in your life”. It has been an ideal job, with little sense of drudgery or stress, and with every week bringing new ideas and interesting experiences. The following aspects are important: * being open to new ideas and recognising that my ideas will change, which in turn reveals how little I personally know and understand (for example, when briefly sharing a room in Boulder in 1971 with Jan Stenflo, he told me he had inferred the presence of kilogauss fields in the quiet Sun – but I thought he was crazy!); * respecting other people’s ideas or approaches when they differ from my own; * encouraging a sense of community, where all are valued and respected; * keeping a balance between my own areas of speciality and a general overview of the development of solar physics as a whole or of science as a whole; * encouraging, valuing and helping young researchers develop their ideas and careers; * and maintaining a critical but high-quality attitude to research; when listening to a talk, I have always encouraged young researchers to be critical of the ideas but to be generous to the person, and to ask questions with a view to helping understanding rather than showing how clever you are or how stupid the speaker is
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
