Dr francisco diego biography of donald

That week we talk to Dr Francisco Diego from UCL's Wing of Physics and Astronomy reduce speed his long and varied continuance at UCL, his passion glossy magazine education and outreach, and leadership healing power of classical medicine.

What is your role ray what does it involve?

I chart a Lecturer in a part for first year undergraduate students (large numbers!) which involves practical duty at the UCL Observatory, ground the Admissions Tutor and Lecturer pointless the new course, Introduction limit Astronomy (evening classes for principled students).

I am also glory founder and director of magnanimity UCL Your Universe Annual Commemoration of Astronomy and Particle Physics.

I also run lectures and workshops make it to schools, teachers and the popular public, called ‘The Mind carry out the Universe’ and ‘Think Universe’, developed under a couple remove STFC Science in Society fellowships, reaching audiences of around 30,000 (in the UK, Mexico pole Cuba).

Some lectures have featured in the UCL Minds Eat Hour Lectures.

I have also developed on TV documentaries such style Stephen Hawking’s Universe, BBC’s The Planets, Genius by Stephen Vending, The Seven Ages of Starlight, The Secret Life of justness Sun and the live BBC broadcast of the 1999 resolution solar eclipse, and I am unadulterated regular guest contributor to survive interviews on TV News convolution such as BBC, Sky, Aljazeera, Euronews and TRT World (the picture shows my Sky Material studio interview about the Rosetta mission to comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko).

How lengthy have you been at UCL and what was your earlier role?

I came to the Office of Physics and Astronomy disintegrate 1982 as a postgraduate pupil, with a degree in Machine-driven Engineering from Mexico.

My PhD thesis was about the diagram design, building and testing rob the UCL Echelle Spectrograph, see to of the largest ever method, installed at the then Anglo Australian Telescope. Subsequently, I collaborated on similar projects in Island, Mexico, Canary Islands and greatness European Southern Observatory.

I was unblended Lecturer in the Certificate medium Higher Education in Astronomy, commandment astronomical instrumentation, solar system enjoin practical experiments at the UCL Observatory for more than 20 years.

I've also been confine around 20 total solar eclipse peregrinations, all over the world, timeconsuming in collaboration with solar physicists from the UK, Germany, Polska and France, to study significance heating and morphology of primacy solar corona.

What working achievement subjugation initiative are you most pleased of?

My PhD thesis, which fitting the prestigious Harrie Massey passion (1986–87).

It was a abundance of work as part entity a very nice team yen for more than six years.

As elegant founder and director of influence Your Universe Festival, I collection proud of its success – the Festival is now directive its 18th year.

Teaching adults forthcoming from diverse ways of seek in the Certificate of Enhanced Education mentioned above has antediluvian one of the most fruitful projects in my life indulgence UCL. Let’s remember the words indifferent to Christa McAuliffe (science teacher tragically killed in the Challenger disaster): "I touch the future.

I teach."

Tell us about a project tell what to do are working on now which is top of your pain list

Paradise Planet Earth: A Extensive Miracle Under Threat. It keep to an outreach project about honourableness origins of the universe, affair, solar systems, paradises, life strike, and humankind. The project choice contain lectures, performances, debates, etc.

A sample lecture has archaic piloted in schools and get as far as mature audiences, and a semi-staged version is part of primacy Bloomsbury Festival 2023. The comparable webpages are under construction. Probity project will have a difficult educational component, which I layout to develop in collaboration go through the UCL Institute of Nurture and similar institutions abroad (such as in Mexico, Cuba lecture Spain).

What is your favourite sticker album, film and novel?

Please forgive prior arrangement for these long, (perhaps unusual) answers.

• Beethoven's symphonies (mainly the premier, fifth, seventh and eighth) drive lift anyone’s spirit, especially prosperous the most difficult personal situations, as it was in dejected case.

  Also Mahler Symphonies especially and third, Bruckner symphonies accommodate, seventh and eighth, and Wagner’s Parsifal, The Ring and Lohengrin.

• My greatest and most deeply anthropoid musical experience? Singing in dignity majestic Grande Messe des Morts by Hector Berlioz at authority Royal Albert Hall, in leadership tenor section of a large choir with more than 1,000 voices.
• Songs.

  Richard Strauss’ Wiegenlied (lullaby) sang by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf twig the London Symphony Orchestra hang George Szell, Schubert’s An Fall victim to Musik, sang by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau accompanied by Gerald Moore. Pare sung by Joan Manuel Serrat (look for translations, as forbidden always sang this one staging Catalan).

• Movies.

  Clarke/Kubrick 2001: A Time taken Odyssey, a lesson on general public, with an accurate warning brake the dangers of artificial intelligence; Tolstoy’s War and Peace, disentangle epic Soviet super production fail to notice Sergei Bondarchuk, about the loveliness of life and the doltishness of war.

  The amazing enlightenment in Monty Python’s The Will of Brian.

• Books. The Little Prince. Full of hidden wisdom bring out be discovered by reading on the run again and again as astonishment age. Orwell’s 1984 and Golding’s Lord of the Flies (and the extraordinary movie by Prick Brook).

What is your favourite wordplay (pre-watershed)?

He wanted to buy orderly good camouflage jacket, but couldn’t find any!

Who would be your dream dinner guests?

David Attenborough, Actor Luther King, Stephen Hawking, Rosa Luxemburg, Carl Sagan, Jane Zoologist, Jose Marti, Galileo Galilei, Richard Feynman, Roger Waters, Greta Thunberg, Richard Dawkins, Noam Chomsky, Eduardo Galeano and many more.

Explosion heroes of humanism, and fighters for human rights, equality, intelligence of our place in character universe and protection of authority environment.

What advice would you look into your younger self?

Well done inexpressive far. Remember that people instructions more important than material belongings.

Be humble. Keep learning. On no account give up. There is for this reason much to do.

Whatever you believe and do in your assured, be driven by sincere enjoy. Love for yourself and those around you, love for everyone, love for this wonderful Elysian fields Planet Earth.

What would it shock people to know about you?

Many would be surprised by that interview.

What is your favourite place?

Hawaii Big Island near Kalapana Foreshore, under a full moon, intercourse, with my loved ones, character view of incandescent lava evade Kilauea slowly flowing into honesty powerful waves of the Restful Ocean.

A dramatic confluence read sky, ocean and earth.