Diverse Structures, Same Science

Extract

This is truly an international gathering, as befits the IAU. We have a wide range of educational backgrounds. Most of us hope to adapt each others’ ideas to suit our own needs. That adaption will be much easier if we appreciate each others’ individual circumstances, and especially if we know something about each others’ different educational systems. To ease the exchange of information, I shall outline two very different educational schemes. I shall call them the “traditional” and the “U.S.” system. I suspect that about half of us will identify more closely with the traditional system, and half with the U.S. system.