 | Robert P. Baird recently completed a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago and is the former editor of Chicago Review. His work has appeared in Poetry, Narrative, Slate, Bookforum, and the New York Observer. Find links to his writing at robertpbaird.com or follow him on Twitter @bobbybaird. He lives in Kampala, Uganda. List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order: |
Category: Recommended Reading
Sughra Raza
 | Sughra grew up in Karachi, Pakistan, along with siblings Abbas and Azra, and several others. She studied fine arts as an undergraduate, later shifting gears to become a doctor of medicine, specializing in diagnostic radiology. Sughra lives in Boston, Massachusetts, working and teaching at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She feels most excited in a world of images, invention, art and music; and inspite of Fenway Park floodlights lighting up the sky in her windows, she remains oblivious to the Red Sox battling the Yankees a stone’s throw away. Email: sraza1 [at] partners.org |
Omar Ali
 | Omar Ali MD is a Pakistani-American academic physician with a research interest in the genetics and epigenetics of obesity. He is also interested in peace in South Asia and moderates the Asiapeace discussion group. Other interests include history and the public understanding of science. In a previous life, Dr Ali was also a book reviewer for the Pakistani magazine “Herald”. Email: omarali502000 [at] yahoo.com List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order:
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Jonathan Halvorson
 | Jonathan has degrees in Philosophy from Columbia University and Reed College. After teaching at Washington University, he left academia, made an abortive foray into campaign politics, then hit on the obvious choice to join a health insurance company, where he presently serves as a Director. Jonathan splits his time between New York City and Easton, PA, with his exemplary wife and two superlative children. Email: jonathan.halvorson [at] gmail [dot] com List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order:
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Tolu Ogunlesi
 | Tolu Ogunlesi works as a journalist in Lagos, Nigeria. He was awarded a 2009 CNN Multichoice African Journalism Prize, in the Arts & Culture category. Before now he has worked as a pharmacist, a management consultant and a corporate communications executive. In 2008 he was a Guest Writer at the Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, Sweden; and in 2009 a Cadbury Visiting Fellow at the University of Birmingham, England. His work has been translated into Dutch, Latvian, Italian, Norwegian and Swedish. He owns one digital camera, two lenses and plenty of hope for a successful career in photography. When he isn’t travelling he is busy looking forward to travelling. The rest of the time he is to be found contemplating starting a novel. Email: tolu.ogunlesi [at] gmail.com Website: www.toluogunlesi.wordpress.com List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order: |
James McGirk
 | James McGirk is an MFA student at Columbia University. His bylines include TIME Asia, More Intelligent Life, Foreign Policy and The L Magazine. For more information you are welcome to visit his website at jamesmcgirk.com. Email: james.mcgirk [at] caa.columbia.edu List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order:
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Dave Munger
 | Dave Munger is a writer living in Davidson, North Carolina. He is a columnist for SEEDMAGAZINE.COM and editor of ResearchBlogging.org. Dave co-founded ResearchBlogging.org, which collects blog posts about peer-reviewed research, in 2007. The site now has over 1,500 registered blogs and features over 16,000 posts in six languages. For five years, Dave and his wife Greta maintained the psychology blog Cognitive Daily, which was chosen three times to appear in the Open Laboratory, an annual anthology of the top science blog posts on the web. It has appeared on numerous top ten lists including ranking seventh on Nature’s 50 popular science blogs list. The site has had over 2.5 million visits. Dave is the author of several college textbooks. Email: dsmunger [at] gmail.com List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order:
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Justin E. H. Smith
 | Justin E. H. Smith is an American essayist, journalist, and satirist based in Montreal. He doesn’t want to write satire, but, as Juvenal said, the world leaves him no choice. He is a regular contributor to Counterpunch, and has written for numerous other online publications, including N+1. His work has been linked or cited in the online editions of the Guardian, the Atlantic Monthly, the Stranger, the Washington Post, and (probably a mistake) the National Review. His archive, www.jehsmith.com, brings together writing of his available on the Internet. Quite apart from all this, Smith is also a professor of philosophy and a specialist on the life and work of G. W. Leibniz. To see his academic profile, please visit www.jehsmith.com/philosophy. Email: [email protected] List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order: |
Akim Reinhardt
 | Akim Reinhardt is an associate professor of History at Towson University in Maryland. Born and raised in the Bronx, he has also lived in Michigan, Nebraska, and Arizona. He currently resides in a Baltimore row home that he shares with a very old but surprisingly resilient cat. He is the author of Ruling Pine Ridge (2007) and blogs regularly at ThePublicProfessor.com. Email: yankeeslim [at] gmail.com List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order:
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Namit Arora
 | Namit Arora grew up in the Indian cow-belt city of Gwalior, famous for its fort and the first epigraphic evidence of zero. After IIT Kharagpur he obtained a Masters in Computer Engineering from Louisiana, followed by a great escape in 1991 to Silicon Valley, where he played a cog in the wheel of Internet technology at three failed startups and at Nokia, Cisco, and McAfee. This didn’t make him wise but enabled him to attend lectures of dubious practical value at Stanford and to live, work, or travel in scores of countries, including yearlong stints in London and Amsterdam. He quit this profession in 2013 and moved from California to Delhi NCR. Namit’s essays have appeared in venues like the Humanist, Philosophy Now, the Times Literary Supplement, the Caravan, the Kyoto Journal, the Philosopher, Himal Southasian, and four college anthologies in the U.S. His review of Joothan won the 3 Quarks Daily 2011 Arts & Literature Prize. During a two-year break (2004-06), Namit traveled across India and created a photojournal. Over 15 museums, 30 academies, and 50 publishers have licensed his photos. His videography includes River of Faith, a documentary film about the Kumbh Mela. Contact him via email, blog or website. List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order:
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Sue Hubbard
 | Sue Hubbard is an award-winning poet, novelist, short-story writer and freelance critic living and working in London.Variously an antique dealer and a small holder she has written about the visual arts for twenty years for such publications as Time Out, The Independent on Sunday, The Independent and The New Statesman. She has published two collections of poetry, Everything Begins with the Skin (Enitharmon) and Ghost Station (Salt) and appeared in the Oxford Poets series (Carcarnet). She was the Poetry Society’s first ever Public Art Poet, responsible for London’s largest public art poem at Waterloo station, and has published a novel, Depth of Field (Dewi Lewis) and a collection of short stories Rothko’s Red (Salt). Her selected art writing is to be published next year by Damien Hirst’s Other Criteria. Website: http://www.suehubbard.com Email: info [at] suehubbard.com List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order: |
Gautam Pemmaraju
 | A Hyderabad native, Gautam has been a Bombay based writer/director since his return to India 14 years ago from NYC. With a couple of Masters degrees, in Communication from the University of Hyderabad and Television-Radio- Film from Syracuse University, he worked as a producer for three and half years at the music TV station Channel[V] during the height of its influence. As an independent since 2000, he works in Broadcast Design, Promotion & Brand Identity as well as in non-fiction TV shows & documentary. Contributing off and on to a few publications, post-colonial India and its strange cities is a primary interest of his, amongst several unrelated, excursionary ones. Email: gautam.pemmaraju [at] gmail.com List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order:
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Richard Eskow
 | Richard (RJ) Eskow is a consultant and writer who has worked as a Fortune 500 executive, a software designer, a professional rock musician. He’s been a consultant in health policy, technology, and medical issues for public and private clients, domestically and in over 20 foreign countries. Richard has conducted interviews with politicians such as John Kerry and Russ Feingold, musicians like Richard Thompson and Billy Joe Shaver, and figures in the worlds of religion and science. He is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and is an occasional co-host for “The Young Turks” radio show, despite being neither Turkish nor particularly young. Email: reskow [at] att.net List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order: |
Ryan Sayre
 | Ryan is currently out east finishing a PhD in socio-cultural anthropology. He works on security and seismicity in Tokyo and posts intermittently on architecture, earthquakes, and anthropology at www.architectonictokyo.com. Email: ryan.sayre [at] yale.edu List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order:
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Nick Werle
 | Raised in modern-day East Egg, Nick has watched two boom-bust business cycles up close. After concentrating in physics and modern critical philosophy at Brown, he has begun studying the history of modern physics and political economy. Currently an Affiliated Scholar at the Pembroke Center studying the history of physics and political economy, he teaches economics at The Wheeler School, in Providence, RI, and works as a writing tutor at the Brown University Writing Center. In addition to reading and writing, Nick enjoys long distance backpacking, cooking, and arguing. Email: nickwerle [at] gmail.com Website: www.runningthezoo.com List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order:
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Rishidev Chaudhuri
 | Rishi was born in Colombo, and grew up in Bangalore before going to college in Massachusetts, where he had a suitably unfocused liberal arts education. Afterwards, he drifted about India, and briefly worked as a journalist for a paper in Calcutta, interviewing local celebrities and struggling artists. He is now working towards a Phd in Applied Mathematics at Yale. In the meanwhile, he tries desperately to keep his literary and scientific interests away from each other, and to shield his worldview from the tentacles of modern science. Email: rishidev.chaudhuri [at] yale.edu List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order:
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Liam Heneghan
 | Liam Heneghan, a Dubliner, is an ecosystem ecologist working at DePaul University in Chicago where he is a Professor of Environmental Science and co-director of DePaul University’s Institute for Nature and Culture. His research has included studies on the impact of acid rain on soil foodwebs in Europe, and on inter-biome comparisons of decomposition and nutrient dynamics in forested ecosystems in North American and in the tropics. Over the past decade Heneghan and his students have been working on restoration issues in Midwestern ecosystems. Heneghan is co-chair of the Chicago Wilderness Science Team. He is also a graduate student in DePaul University’s philosophy program, a part-time model, and an occasional poet. Email: lhenegha [at] gmail [dot] com List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order:
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Jim Culleny
 | Jim Culleny is the Poetry Editor of 3 Quarks Daily. After a stint in the navy, Jim received a BA in Art Education from William Paterson University and did graduate work in art at NYU. He taught art for several years in NJ public schools in Newark and Bergen County. Taught a little bit of everything else during two years at a remote residential community school in New York’s Adirondacks. Was a social worker in Lower Manhattan before Soho was Soho. Made a living most of his life as a carpenter, designer, and builder. Did regular radio commentary for about 10 years during Morning Edition on WFCR.FM in Amherst, Mass. and some for NPR on All Things Considered. Played and sang his way from rockabilly to jazz in numberless band permutations over a period too long to believe. Came to poetry through songwriting. Has had work published in The Third Muse Poetry Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, Penthouse Journal, and in 5-Minute Pieces, a chapbook published in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. He’s also been writing a regular op-ed column for the past 12 years for the Greenfield Recorder along the beautiful Connecticut River, and is presently making a living as project manager for an Architectural firm. Jim lives with his wife, Pat, of 31 years, and his 17 year old granddaughter. He has three daughters and four other grandchildren. Email: jimculleny [at] comcast.net Jim’s poems at 3QD, in reverse chronological order: |
Saifedean Ammous
 | Saifedean Ammous lives in New York and is a candidate for a PhD in Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He grew up in Ramallah in Colonized Palestine and has a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from the American University of Beirut and a Master’s in Development Management from the London School of Economics. He supports Liverpool FC rabidly, cooks the undisputed best shrimp pasta in the world, and blogs at TheSaifHouse.wordpress.com Email: Saifedean.ammous [at] gmail.com List of writings for 3QD, in reverse chronological order: |
The Ultimate Obit – The periodic table
Of course, it’s even worse to know what the first line in your obit should be—and then not rate an obit at all, because people forgot you. Such was the fate of Albert Ghiorso (hard “g”), who helped discover more chemical elements, a dozen, than any human being who ever lived. Yet his death earned just three measly mentions in newspapers across the country (and those weeks after he died). I’d like to do the little I can to rectify that.
I wrote about Ghiorso in a recent book, and beyond the wizardry of his science, I remember most of all his mischief. He specialized in building radiation detectors that could pick out the presence of just a few atoms of new elements. The discovery of a new element was always a celebratory event—the periodic table is the most precious real estate in science—so during one experiment Ghiorso decided to wire his radiation detector to his building’s fire alarms at the University of California at Berkeley, so it would briiiiiing every time an atom appeared. For various reasons his team ran the experiment at night, and they cheered all through the a.m. as the atoms rang out. It was a complete success, except Ghiorso forgot to unwire the fire alarm the next morning. While he was at home sleeping, it went off during the day, forcing a panicked evacuation. The administration was not amused. In discovering a different element, berkelium, element 97, Ghiorso suggested using “Bm” as the chemical symbol for it, because it had been such a “stinker” to discover. To the eternal disappointment of every sophomore chemistry student in the world, the idea was vetoed.