Personal Anti-Honours
- Please, forget about that
In early nineties, when finishing my PhD thesis on the summation of
divergent series
in perturbation theories, I received encouraging letters by Profs.
A.S. Wightman and
G. 't Hooft.
With great expectations I was looking for a post-doctoral position.
After nearly missing one at the Harvard University
[see here], I received a
reply from one French theoretical institute, which could roughly be stated
as follows: "We have not
made our final decision yet, but you, you can simply forget about that."
- Inapt postdoc
During my brief post-doctoral stay at IPT EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland,
I was introduced to the subject of photonic crystals by Prof. H. Kunz in summer 1992.
Prof. H. Kunz called our (my and our colleague X. Zotos) attention to
the bulk KKR method. Despite that
he knew that, at that time, I did not have any background in band-structure
calculations at all and was proud of not performing any numerical simulations,
he wanted from us computational results in mere 3 months!
Obviously, it did not work and Prof. H. Kunz lost soon his interest in
working with his inapt postdoc. You only realize later that what
appears to be theoretically trivial, takes on average one month to implement
numerically. Provided that the very last numerical detail of theory is not ready
yet, it may well
take over one year before you enjoy playing with a running computer program.
(A few years later, at AMOLF Amsterdam, I took me
almost 1.5 year to complete this job).
- Photonic bulk KKR method cannot work
One year later, while still continuing with the work on the bulk
photonic KKR method on my own, I finished its theoretical framework and
submitted my results to Europhys. Lett. However, the referee claimed
that the method cannot work, because I did not include longitudinal modes. After
replying back that the KKR works with scattered fields, Prof. Mlynek,
then editor in charge of my manuscript, arranged for a second referee report,
which essentially restated the first referee point of view. My direct appeal to
Prof. Mlynek was unsuccessful and my manuscript was refused. It took further
two year before its extended version appeared in
Phys. Rev. B 51, 2068-2081 (1995).
[cond-mat/9404049]
- Negligible integration potential
After in turned out impossible to find out a tenure(-track) position in academia
(I have got single interview on my cca 300 applications) and I started working outside academia, I tried to keep in touch
with research activities and asked to be included into in one of the European
6th Frameworks. Despite having one of the best packages on modelling
photonic crystals and small nanostructures (mostly developed by myself),
I have got the following decision on 13-07-2003:
``... From the information in your
forms, the core group felt you would participate as an individual and this
was deemed to have negligible integration potential".
- Not even worth of a peer review
On March 3, 2004, I have submitted my manuscript providing a complete
solution for the classical problem of a dipole radiating inside and outside
a multicoated sphere for a publication in Phys. Rev. A (manuscript number AQ8914).
Dipole can be located either outside or embedded anywhere within
the multilayered sphere. Among many other quantities, both radiative and
non-radiative decay rates are determined.
In my view this has been one of my most important contributions.
Nevertheless, on March 16, 2004, I received reply from the editor
of Phys. Rev. A
stating that "... from our understanding of the paper's physics results,
context, and motivation, we conclude that your paper does not have the
importance and broad interest needed for publication in our journals.
This judgment results in part from our reading of the abstract, introduction,
and conclusions, which are crucial for our readership. In view of our assessment,
we are not sending your manuscript out for review."
(See Phys. Rev.'s full reply here.
Note that I would not have mentioned this antihonour if my manuscript was refused by any
of 7 referees I suggested.
What I complain against here is refusing
a manuscript without even sending the manuscript for a review
(Full account of this story can be found here here.)
© Alexander Moroz, March 31, 2005