To all,
Today (Monday) I got my PhD grade. The ceremony began at 15:30 MET and
lasted an hour. I had to defend my thesis before a 'tribunal' of people from
different universities.
Members of my family, friends and colleagues from my work place, the
Nijmegen Public Records, in Dutch it is called Het Archief were there too.
This was a day in a person's life that is a climax.
After the ceremony we had a dinner in a restaurant close by. One of my
coaches gave me a book that I had wanted to buy from Alapage on the
Internet, a Dutch translation of Denis Guedj, La Mesure du Monde. La
Meridienne, Paris 1987. I gave that coach, who was there when I reached the
first two levels, another coach who helped me to get to this PhD level, and
the professor, who is the official promoter, each a copy of Louis's book, La
Grande Metrication and a bottle of French wine.
No less than four newspapers in my country have shown interest in my thesis.
A large article appeared in a national daily last Saturday, three other
newspapers will follow soon. This gave me a chance to strike a blow for the
cause of SI-metric against old metric and creepy crawly ifp.
It is hoped that other historians will take up the work and start research
in their own countries or areas.
Han
Historian of Dutch Metrication, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Congratulations! Can we read any of those articles on a web site somewhere?
Carleton
