Introduction:  Before she left for graduate school a few years ago, a student asked some of her friends at WSU to fill out this biographical form.  It was as such a good idea that I've decided to share it.

Name:  Brad Carroll

Occupation:  Astronomer, Professor of Physics, Teacher

Your Dream Occupation:  As above (really)

Maternal Grandmother's Name and Occupation:  Never knew of her

Maternal Grandfather's:  Robert Thomason - railroad telegrapher (Morse code)

Paternal Grandmother's:  Bernice Fazenbaker - homemaker

Paternal Grandfather's:  Fred Carroll - salesman and inspector of Wilson hams

Favorite color:  Alpenglow

Favorite planet or solar system body:  Europa, one of Jupiter's moons

Female in history you would most like to meet:   Hypatia, a mathematician and astronomer at the Great Library of Alexandria (ca. 400 AD)

Male in history:  Galileo Galilei, the first modern scientific thinker

History of insanity in the family?  I hope so, but I'm afraid not

Favorite animal?  Sea otter -- my choice for my next life

Insect?  Honeybee

Underwater creature?  Beluga whale -- the great joy they take in playing is amazing

Favorite dream:  Any dream in which I can fly (surprisingly common)

Scariest dream:  Being whirled around in a tornado while people should at me in an incomprehensible language (surprisingly common when I was young)

Favorite cartoon character:  Dilbert, Doonesbury

Coke/Pepsi?   Root beer (or Coke, never Pepsi)

Favorite pet (& name, type):  Don't have one

Favorite songs:  "Little Suite" from Bach's Anna Magdalena Notebook; Beethoven's 6th Symphony (and 7th and 9th); Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue;  Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis and Folk Song Suite; Erik Satie's 3 Gymnopédies; Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings; Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring

Favorite authors:

• Nonfiction:  Oliver Sacks' The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat.   Read this!  Sacks' book of neurological clinical cases makes you think deeply about what it means to be human.  Lewis Thomas' The Lives of a Cell and other books; Evan S. Connell's The White Lantern, A Long Desire, and Son of the Morning Star; Ian Frazier's The Great Plains; William Dunham's Journey Through Genius: The Great Theorems of Mathematics
   
• Fiction:  Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series (wonderful!); Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon; mysteries by Sue Grafton and Amanda Cross (Death in a Tenured Position -- what a great title!)
   
• Theater:  Tom Stoppard (especially Arcadia, which sums up everything that is important to me); Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd
   
• Poetry:  Emily Dickinson and Wislawa Szymborska

Religion:  To help and love others, to see clearly and appreciate the universe (humanism with a touch of deism)

Favorite tool:  Imagination

Favorite food:  The trout I've just caught, cooking in stewed tomatoes and served over rice

Favorite word:  Perseverance

Message for Cristine to take to grad school:  A grook (short poem) by Piet Hein, a Danish astist and mathematician:

Here is a fact
That should help you fight
A bit longer.
Things that don't actually
Kill you outright
Make you stronger.

The race does not go to the swiftest or smartest, but to those who persevere.  So always follow and do what you love, because there is no other emotion strong enough to pull you through.

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Last modified on Friday, March 26, 2004 11:12:49 AM.