Organizations and Strategies in Astronomy 6

Book excerpt: When I wasa child, growing up in South America,I often went camping in the wild and hence had direct access to the wondrous Southern sky; the Southern Cross was all mine at the time. Little did I know then that the study of the sky would take such a huge importance in my life, and that in the end astronomy and astrophysics would in many ways become my country and my religion. I have lived in several di?erent countries, and when asked my nationality, I am always very tempted to reply: astronomer. I started as a theorist, and my only dream in my youth was to spend nights thinking and calculating, with paper and pencil, and to have the impression by dawn that I had understood something new. So at the time astronomy was seen or dreamt by me as a solitary endeavour, with periodic encounters with my wise adviser and professors; it is this model that I adopted when doing my PhD work. My generation has lived through many revolutions of all kinds. Those in astronomy, I believe, remain particularly remarkable, and I am a true product of them. Now, I elect to live and work in large organizations, and to share my endeavours with many people. And I relish the series of Andr ́ e Heck on Organizations and Strategies in Astronomy, which help us recover our memories, reconstitute our own story, and read with glee about our neighbouring or far-away colleagues.