> From: Brian J. Beesley [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> A couple of points here:
> (1) Can anyone honestly commit to a project for a whole decade?
Yes, they can and do. In the field of computational number theory, several
participants in the Cunningham project have been active much longer than my
decade. Sam Wagstaff has been co-ordinating it longer than that. To be
honest, I don't know when he started. Perhaps Peter Mon tgomery (another
long-time participant) can inform us, as I know he's also on the Mersenne
list.
In other fields, it's not unusual to commit to a decade or more. Consider
the deep space missions such as Voyager, or the astronomers who monitor a
particular class of objects for most of their working lives. I know some
amateurs who have been observing particular variable stars since the 1960's;
George Alcock has been searching for comets and novae since the late
fifties.
Paul
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