Anthonie Jacob (‘Ton') Bosman: order and logic

摘要

@@Ton Bosman was my first boss at Philips Research (the ‘Nat. Lab.’)in Eindhoven. He was a physicist with a strong empirical approach ‘knowing y measuring’),, ut imultaneously he rged s to earch for the physical atio ehind the results too. This approach is helpful particularly for young graduates. It helps build structure and logic in research work, it also stimulates one to ig eeper for underlying rinciples. What I benefited most from during my life however, are Ton Bosman'slessons about communication of scientific results, both ritten nd poken. After you finished writing a paper he checked its organization, whether the conclusions were supported by the facts, whether the data obtained were fully exploited, the logic behind its reasoning and the self explanatory nature of figures and tables. The accuracy of the chemistry (tthat is your job!),, or any other science, was secondary. Applying such ideas about writing publications onsequently results in rastic mprovement f the quality of he riting. With regards to scientific presentations at conferences (oor in the Lab itself) Ton Bosman'sprinciple was: let the young researchers take the floor right from the start of their career. He even passed invitations for keynote lectures on to us. For instance, as a 29 year old I was a keynote speaker in Japan amongst 60 and 70 year old scientists. When I arrived at the conference, he apanese thought that hilips ad ent the wrong person. Ton had only one condition: before anything is being presented, there must be a practice lecture first. There you stand try-ing to do your best but it is by far not good enough. You note that the slides are not well organized and contain too much information. You must determine where the highlights are, what your messages are, if you are missing interim conclusions, what the climax is, and if there is lack of intonation in what you say, etc. etc. All these remarks can be summarized into one sentence: offer your audience understandable key conclusions and messages and do not try to show how great a researcher you are -that is ssumed rom your nclusion n the program.