Wanted to check out the new board by posting a question. So far I love it. Thank you unsung heroes for the great transition.
So when you read the history of physics or geology, there were lots of scientists (e.g. Cavendish) who funded their own research. It seemed like science was embraced as a personal passion by the rich and privileged.
Who was the last known, self funded physicist/geologist/chemist who made significant contributions to science ?
This Wikipedia article says that Julian Barbour is a living physicist who funds his own research. If this article is accurate and relatively complete, he is the most recent one. The article also talks about other scientists who funded themselves:
The most prominent guy I can think of in recent times is James Lovelock - he of the galaxy brain, 100 years old atm!
http://www.jameslovelock.org/curriculum-vitae/
Even then he was in the conventional scientific establishment for the early / mid parts of his career, albeit with a very unconventional breadth of research interest. He says on his website that he has been an independent scientist since 1964.
Hmm, when I link to a Wikipedia article, this message board inserts the article, not just the link.
I think that you are seeing a preview of the article when your post is displayed. Facebook does this too when a link is shared. I doubt that the actual article is embedded in your post.
It is relatively easy to fund some research into, say, string theory on your own. I suspect it is a little more difficult to get that particle accelerator, dilution refrigerator, plutonium, radio telescope, and room full of full-time assistants set up.
If you are a multi billionaire who can privately fund anything conceivable, including an entire research institute — well, nobody got that rich slaving away doing basic research.
It still happens. When I was in grad school, I spent a year self-funded, for the simple reason that there wasn’t any funding available for me.
On the one hand, this is a lot easier for theorists than for experimentalists. On the other hand, there’s also a lot more funding available for experimentalists.
If you embed the link in your text like this, you’ll just get clickable text. If you put the link on a line by itself, you’ll get a “onebox,” which is a preview of the page you’re linking to, like this:
Remember this. Someday someone might ask if anything good happened during that accursed year 2020, you can mention it, maybe win something.
Einstein was a clerk at the Swiss patent office when he wrote his miracle five papers published in 1905. Pretty significant. Of course, later on he had academic appointments.
Gary, something’s clearly wrong there. When you insert the link that way, the wombat is visible.
At least, unlike the old board, you don’t get those broken links where the trailing parentheses isn’t included in the link. That always bothered me, along with the 502/504 errors we’d been getting for the past few months. I think people tend to forget the annoyances we lived with in the previous environment while complaining about the new ones.
Because wombats are invisible?
That’s part of the onebox thing. If there’s a picture at the site, you’ll see that too. I noticed pictures in threads on the first day, even started a thread in ATMB about it.
Thanks for the replies. And love the cool features of the new board
Can you close this thread now ? Want to see how a closed thread looks 
Some wombats are invisible. Not that one.
So actually there are four extant species of Wombats, three are visible to humans and photocameras and one (or maybe more) invisible.
(Edited to experiment)
And the only known specimen of that fourth species changed his online name 
He isn’t related to this guy, is he?
Well, I’ve never seen a giant wombat, so…
I am amused by the multiple levels of this conversation, and by the sharp turn in the topic of the thread.
I suppose it makes sense if you remember that wombats have cubical poop. That takes some interesting physics and the only funding required is a bag of Purina Wombat Chow.