Whoops, that was supposed to have been signed Nonblack Hole, but since the cat is out of the bag, be it known that I am Dr. Wm. Bruce Olson, now retired from the Molecular Spcectroscopy Division, Institute of Basic Standards, National Bureau of Standards (now NIST, 3 miles away, where I am still in touch with former colleagues).

My dual specialty area was instrumention, the design and construction (optical and electronic) for the purpose of obtaining well calibrated high resolution infrared spectra, and the analysis of vibrational bands of symmetric and assymetric rotor spectra. Techniques were initially plane grating spectrometers, then tunable solid state and fixed frequency gaseous lasers, then Fourier transform spectrometers (the last I didn't design and build).

I never saw the first laser in operation, but about two months later Bell labs people brought theirs down to Princeton (where I was doing a post-doc under President Kenney's science advisor, whom I rarely saw, because he was in Washington) and gave us a demonstration.

From the time of my discovery of perturbation allowed transitions in symmetric top molecules about 1970 until my retirement I was #1 or close to it in symmetric top analysis worldwide. Good work on symmetric top spectra was at best 3 rotational constants when I entered the field. My data and analysis were good enough that I was the first to get a 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th rotational constant from symmetric top infrared spectra.

The structure of hydrogen peroxide in the chemical reference handbooks is from my Ph. D. thesis project. I managed (for the first time) to get a moderately high resolution spectra of it. Previously published spectra had proved to be nothing but interference fringes from the absorption cell.

I have worked on joint projects with visiting scientists from Novosibirsk to Tokyo- the long way around.

Those fancy computer programs that model complex molecules and and make a 2D projection of a 3D model on a computer screen, so you can rotate it around and look at it from all angles, use the bond distances and angles determined by me and fellow infrared and microwave spectroscopists at NBS. X-Ray diffraction can't come close to the accuracy we can get for bond distances and angles. We occasionally worked with the time and frequency division at Boulder, Colorado (where 4 of them, all of whom I know, extended direct frequency measurments into the visible region of the spectrum) and on one visit there I got a personal tour and explaination of the workings of the cesium atomic clock that is the time standard for the US (They wouldn't let me touch it).

I left a spectroscopy conference at a resort near Loveland pass, Colordo, one Friday morning at about 10 AM, and made it back to open the open sing at WES in Washington, DC on time (8 PM).

Although not an astronomer, I have taken data on Jim Brault's FTS spectrometer at the MacMath solar telescope observatory at Kitt Peak. You could see through the window into the next room the aproximately 10 inch diameter blinding image of the sun at the focus of the telescope, and several astronomers (with very dark glasses) carefully observing it.

The long path-low temperture absorption cell I designed and built for the FTS instrument at NIST is still in use. It allows up to 58 passes of the two meter base path with pressures up to 10 atmospheres and temperatures to -40 C. The unusually high number of passes is from the vanishing of astigmatism in a configuration I discovered with my 3D ray tracing program. Absolute absorption intensities of high accuracy for N2, O2 and H20 have been determined with it (N2 and O2 only absorb from pressured induced quadrupoles moments.)

What's your name and what are your credentials Gray Rooster?