I suspect that my background is rather atypical for an academic. While I was growing up, my parents not only did not support my scientific interests, but did everything in their power to prevent me from becoming successful as a scientist.
I first became interested in the connection between physics and computer science in elementary school, when I read about Richard Feynman’s idea of a quantum mechanical simulator. In high school, I obtained a University of Toronto library card with the help of Dr. John R. Percy, and spent a lot of time at the Erindale College library. (The Mississauga campus of the University of Toronto was called Erindale College at the time.) Through my association with the library, I was introduced to the arXiv, and also learned about the black hole information loss problem. The problem fascinated me, and I therefore set about studying what I could of quantum computation and quantum information. The arXiv also inspired me to think about how electronic publishing would affect scientific communication in the future.
My parents believe that it is worthless to study any subject which is not in the school curriculum, and they took every opportunity to remind me of this belief. The time that I devoted to my extracurricular studies enraged my father. He derided cosmology as nonsense, claimed that theoretical computer science is not computer science, and insisted that physics and computer science had nothing to do with each other. My parents effectively made it impossible to study under their roof, and on top of that my father forbade me from going to the university library.
I was very fortunate that the mother of a high school chum came to my rescue. Mrs. Mallo opened up her home to me and gave me some space where I could study in peace, and also arranged transportation to and from the university. Because of her, I was able to study what I wanted to study while I was in high school.
My undergraduate years, which were spent at the downtown campus of the University of Toronto, were a very taxing time for me. The only way I could manage my parents’ disruption of my education was to avoid overtly studying any subject which met with their disapproval. I was further circumscribed by the requirements of the Engineering Science program, which had a very heavy course load. This meant that, for example, while I had separate courses in quantum mechanics and information theory, I could not spend a lot of time studying the two together as a synthetic whole. The computer science courses also leaned heavily towards application rather than theory. Nevertheless, in spite of the restrictions that I faced because of my parents, I succeeded in getting away with studying many of the subjects which they did not wish me to study.
I became interested in control theory while an undergraduate and followed up my BASc with an MASc degree in electrical engineering, focusing on the control of discrete-event systems. My thesis advisor was Dr. Raymond Kwong, and I also received the tutelage of Professor Emeritus W. Murray Wonham.
At the time, Waterloo was becoming one of the major centres of quantum computing research in Canada, and, indeed, in the world. However, my father continued to berate it as a worthless subject. I wanted to move to Waterloo and to return to computer science, and I never forgot the impression that the arXiv made on me. So I studied information retrieval and its application to genomics with Dr. Gord Cormack and Dr. Charlie Clarke. I also finally took my first course in quantum computation and quantum information, which was taught by Dr. Michele Mosca and Dr. Raymond Laflamme.
I finished my MMath relatively quickly and enrolled in the Ph.D. program, ostensibly to continue research into information retrieval and genomics. After two years, during which time my parents continuously attacked me for my scientific interests, I switched over to quantum computing with Dr. Richard Cleve as my advisor. In retrospect, I deeply regret having spent so much time and effort trying to circumvent my parents’ continual attempts to destroy my scientific career, rather than actually contributing to science, since nothing I did altered their behaviour in the slightest. A year after the switch, I legally changed my surname to honour the woman who made my scientific career possible. The rest, as they say, is history.
See also: About me.
– davinci (D. L. Yonge-Mallo)
0 Responses to “My academic and personal background”