Marek Ziebart

I'm generally interested in what makes us human, but also in what makes exceptional humans - how they lived, what they did that led them to make extraordinary impact. I am writing this blog entry in Frankfurt Airport, and I'm very tired so the subject matter is close to my heart. Like a lot of people today I probably don't get enough sleep, and I am certainly interested in how I can make the most of the sleep I do get. Over the past few years I have collected snippets of research on sleep and followed the thinking of specialists. I have experimented with various ideas and I feel ready to draw some conclusions. Of course, I am not a professor of sleep - none of what follows is proven in any rigorous way, but (in the fashion of the natural philosophers I admire so much) it has all been subjected to my own experiments. I hope you find it interesting, thought provoking and useful. In this first post on the subject I'll discuss the sleep cycle and napping. In the next pos

Eulogy for the Awesome Professor Seymour Laxon It was with great sadness that I learnt of the recent death of my friend and colleague, Seymour Laxon. I've worked at University College London (UCL) since 2000 and I met Seymour soon after joining. We have a mutual friend in ex-British Antarctic Survey scientist Dave Mantripp. Now, part of the problem of working at a place like UCL is that you begin to think that exceptional is the norm. People like Seymour change the world; they effect that change in a quiet, determined way. They are the key scientific figures of their time. Look at the list of Seymour’s accomplishments, the work that he and Duncan Wingham and their group have done: it is breath-taking. Moreover, it is breath-takingly important – Seymour was working at the very heart of issues that will affect everyone on the planet. Just read that back again: everyone on the planet. None of that went to Seymour’s head – he was one of the most professional, dedicated scient