Caltech students in Hawking's lecture

collegealum314
Thu, 05 Apr 2007 12:14:31 +0000

Seriously, people do not interact with each other at top universities like the people from the snobby prep school in Dead Poet’s Society. And certainly the culture in the science departments is not like that at all.

I’ve been at many academic seminars, and people typically do not even use the speaker’s name when asking the question; they just go ahead and ask the question when the speaker acknowledges them. What the CalTech students was not at all inappropriate and no one would even notice it.

If you address a professor you are not doing research for (i.e., a class or something), I would address them as Professor so-and-so. If you are doing research for a professor, sometimes people just ask the professor right at the beginning what he/she wants to be called. They will almost always reply that you should call them by their first name. Surprisingly, the formality expected in high school is a lot more than in undergrad and grad school.

Another thing is that some of these physics guys have a real disdain for formality and snobbishness. Read “Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman!” and you’ll see what I mean.