Last modified 30 May 2010

About Me

Education and Positions

Fellow, London Institute for Mathematical Sciences, 2008 - present
    Physics
Charge de Recherche (lecturer), CNRS/ Curie Institute, 2001 - present
    Physics
Postdoc, Ecole Normale Superieure, 2000 - 2001
    Laboratoire de Physique Statistique (with Bernard Derrida)
Junior Fellow, Caius College, Cambridge, 1997 - 2003
    Theory of Condensed Matter, Cavendish Laboratory
Ph.D., Physics, St John's College, Cambridge, 1994 - 1998
    Theory of Condensed Matter, Cavendish Laboratory (supervised by Robin Ball)
B.S., Physics, California Institute of Technology, 1990-1994
    Page House

Geek Code

(version 3.12): GS/GTW d++ s: a C++ U+(++) P+>+++ L+++(-) E--- W++ N? o? K- w--- !O M++ V- PS--- PE++ Y? PGP t++ 5? !X R-- !tv b+++ !DI !D G++ e++++ h--(++) r++ z?
For a translation, see the Geek Decoder.

Rules to Live By

Follow the sun, do not hope for it.
We are that which we do frequently.
Nothing tastes as good as cut feels.
A letter is as intimate as meeting up.
Half of being well dressed is being fit.
Physics is my wife, writing is my mistress.
No gym without Mass; no Mass without gym.
The more you complain, the less you are loved.
Spend a part of each day with paper and pencil.
To believe something is not reason to proclaim it.
That which you would not buy for 50p, throw it out.
When a task appears to be unpleasant, do it quickly.
Amongst acquaintances, appear to have no extreme views.
Spend more time with people you admire, less with people you know circumstantially.
Keep your discontents secret; if the world knows them, it will despise you and increase them.

Author Interview

I did this interview with Little, Brown, the American publisher of The Man's Book.

Literary Agent

Patrick Walsh
Convile and Walsh, 2 Ganton St, London W1F 7QL

Tech Specs

Main computer: MacBook Air
Word processor: vi
Programming language: C++
Email: Gmail
Technical papers: LaTeX
All other layout: QuarkXpress 8
Figures: xfig, Adobe Illustrator
Phone: iPhone
Writing: 0.5mm mechanical pencil

10 Favourite Books

Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
Arnold, Arnold Schwarzenegger
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
A Hero of Our Time, Mikhail Lermontov
De Imitatione Christi, Thomas a Kempis
Emile, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Englishman's Suit, Hardy Amies
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Littlewood's Miscellany, J. E. Littlewood
Tolstoy, Henri Troyat

10 Men I Admire (or, 10 Favourite Biographies)

Hercules Bellville, 1939-2009
James Bond, 1924-
George Bryan Brummell, 1778-1840
Winston Churchill, 1874-1965
Richard Feynman, 1918-1988
Ernest Hemingway, 1899-1961
Saint Thomas More, 1478-1535
Louis Mountbatten, 1900-1979
Arnold Schwarzenegger, 1947-
Leo Tolstoy, 1828-1910

Supervisor Genealogy

(wwsb = who was supervised by):
Thomas Fink was supervised by
Robin Ball, wwsb
Sir Sam Edwards, wwsb
Julian Seymour Schwinger, wwsb
Isidor Isaac Rabi, wwsb
Albert Potter Wills, wwsb
Arthur Gordon Webster, wwsb
Hermann von Helmholtz, wwsb
Johannes Peter Müller.

Erdös number

My Erdös number is 3, in three ways:
(1) Thomas Fink -> Herbert Edelsbrunner -> Boris Aronov, Janos Pach, Richard Pollack, Pavel Valtr, Douglas Brent West, Foong Frances Yao -> Paul Erdös
(2) Thomas Fink -> Bernt Sturmfels -> Persi Diaconis, Ronald Lewis Graham, Richard Pollack -> Paul Erdös
(3) Thomas Fink -> Lior Pachter -> Daniel Kleitman -> Paul Erdös

My rational Erdös number is <= 60/101.
It is defined as follows: Draw the network of collaborators with finite Erdös number. Place a 1 ohm resistor at each edge. The restistance between the point Erdös and some author is that author's rational Erdös number. 60/101 comes from the network formed by the people above.