My name is Alan Watson. I can be reached by email at alan@alan-watson.org.
“In my case, the effort of these years to live in the dress of an Arab, and to imitate their mental foundation, quitted me of my English self, and let me look at the West and its conventions with new eyes: they destroyed it all for me. At the same time I could not sincerely take on the Arab skin: it was only an affectation. Easily was a man made an infidel, but hardly might he be converted to another faith.”
— T. E. Lawrence
My passport says I am British. I grew up in Middlesbrough, an industrial town on the north-east coast of England, but I spent most of my twenties in the US, most of my thirties in Morelia, a provincial city in México, and it looks like I will spend most of my forties in México City.
“Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.”
— Richard P. Feynman
I obtained degrees in theoretical physics and astronomy in England and the US and, after a couple of post-doctoral positions, am now an associate professor of astronomy at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
“La découverte d’un mets nouveau fait plus pour le bonheur du genre humain que la découverte d’une étoile.”
— Jean Anthleme Brillat-Savarin
My interests outside work have largely been those best suited to the situations in which I’ve found myself. I’ve raced dinghys and yachts, helped run a film society, hiked, and dabbled in DX-ing; at the moment I enjoy swimming, diving, hacking Scheme, drilling holes in the walls of our apartment, and making my son laugh. The invariant has been cooking.
“If we take matrimony at its lowest, we regard it as a sort of friendship recognised by the police.”
— Robert Louis Stevenson
I am a husband.
“We never know the love of our parents for us till we have become parents.”
— Henry Ward Beecher
I am a father.