About Me
I grew up in Sydney, New South Wales, and studied for my Honours and Masters at the University of Sydney. I studied abroad at the University of California, Berkeley, and in 2017 I completed my DPhil in Astrophysics at Balliol College, Oxford. I'm vegetarian, keen on Python, Bayes, cycling, coffee, and Earl Grey. I was a member of the winning Balliol College team in the 2016-17 series of University Challenge on BBC2, with the wonderful Joey Goldman, Freddy Potts, and Jacob Lloyd.
Sometimes I write: see my latest piece in The Monthly, about the possible discovery of phosphine on Venus, which has been included in Best Australian Science Writing 2021. In the Oxonian Review, check out my short story The Marlborough Arms and my review of Tim Winton's Island Home. For the Cooper Square Review I wrote a couple of pieces and a review of David Wallace-Wells' The Uninhabitable Earth.
Outside of physics, I'm interested in history and critical understandings of physics and astronomy. We have to situate our science in a social and historical context, and understand how crucial the work of once-marginalized figures has been to this heritage. You may like this IWD 2017 piece about Ruby Payne-Scott, the Australian pioneer of radio interferometry, and I've digitized and hosted Elizabeth Alexander's original report on her radio observations of the Sun (explaining the "Norfolk Island Effect").
