Tuesday, December 04, 2007

I know somebody famous!

I don't know how I managed to miss the announcement for the 2002 Nobel Prizes, but something I was reading yesterday mentioned Daniel Kahneman's 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics and a bell went off in my head. Surely, there weren't very many scientists/academians named Daniel Kahneman. So, I did a search this morning and sure enough, this is my old Psyc 200 prof! How very exciting!! He was (probably still is) an excellent prof too. I loved that man.

The year that I took the course from him (1983, University of British Columbia), I saw an article he'd written for Scientific American and talked to him about it. He was pleased that I, an undergrad no less, was interested and gave me a reprint of it, which I asked him to sign. This means I have an autograph from a Nobel Prize winner!!

This is even more exciting than when we went to see Noam Chomsky's talk. I am so pleased for Professor Kahneman.

I have to add that thespian celebrities don't excite me. Some people go to Hollywood to gawk at "stars", but those "celebrities" are generally (not all, of course) such fluff. Give me an intellectual any day!

"To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge." ~ Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881)