## Thursday, October 1, 2009

### Who Will Succeed Hawking?

Now that he is 67 years old, it is Cambridge University policy that Stephen Hawking relinquish his title of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics and so, he resigned that post yesterday but he did not retire from Cambridge University. This event raises the question "Who will succeed him?"

If you're thinking of applying, here are the R-massaged stats on previous appointments:

Name Born Died
1 Isaac Barrow 1630 1677
2 Sir Isaac Newton 1643 1727
3 William Whiston 1667 1752
4 Nicholas Saunderson 1682 1739
5 John Colson 1680 1760
6 Edward Waring 1736 1798
7 Isaac Milner 1750 1820
8 Robert Woodhouse 1773 1827
9 Thomas Turton 1780 1864
10 Sir George Biddell Airy 1801 1892
11 Charles Babbage 1791 1871
12 Joshua King 1798 1857
13 Sir George Stokes 1819 1903
14 Sir Joseph Larmor 1857 1942
15 Paul Dirac 1902 1984
16 Sir James Lighthill 1924 1998
17 Stephen Hawking 1942 NAN

> apage # at time of appointment
[1] 34 26 35 29 59 24 48 47 42 25 37 41 30 46 30 45 37

> summary(apage)
Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max.
24.00 30.00 37.00 37.35 45.00 59.00

> paste("Youngest:", lpdata$Name[which.min(age)], ...) [1] "Youngest: Edward Waring (24), 6th appoinment" ... [1] "Oldest: John Colson (59), 5th appoinment" Curiously, there are several times when the required retirement age was exceeded. > lpdata$Name[which(retage>67,arr.ind=TRUE)]
[1] John Colson Isaac Milner Sir George Stokes Sir Joseph Larmor

Before you dust off your resume, however, there are a couple of things worth contemplating:
• All appointments so far, have been an inside job.
• There's some speculation that it might help to be a woman this time.