X-Message-Number: 23615
Subject: Re: Correction Wanted in #23607
From: Aubrey de Grey <>
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 12:53:06 +0000

Kitty Antonik Wakfer wrote, after a curious failure to check her facts
with anyone who would know them:

> While Aubrey de Grey does have a Ph.D., it is in the computer field, as
> Aubrey himself acknowledges in his own bio linked from Extropy Institute
> http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/sens/AdGbio.htm

My Ph.D. is entirely for my work in biogerontology.  I received it in
2000, for the work discussed in my first two published papers (BioEssays
19:161 and J. Anti-Aging Medicine 1:53) and my book (The Mitochondrial
Free Radical Theory of Aging").  I have re-read my bio page and can see
no statement there suggesting otherwise.

> the "work" that Aubrey describes in his bio and for which he is well
> known on sci.life-extension and in the biogerontological scientific
> community is not what Cambridge University employs him to perform.

This is quite correct and I an not aware of any suggestions to the
contrary.  My job title, "computer associate", was invented by the
University in about 1990 as a category of research associate so as to
get around University rules concerning how much a research associate
could be paid, which were hampering retention of key computer staff.
(Inventing new rules to get around old rules is not unusual here...)

> He is also not on the faculty at Cambridge and therefore not a professor.

This is quite correct; moreover, were I on the faculty I would still not
be a professor.  The term "professor" is used differently in the UK: with
the exception of a small number of personal appointments, only chairs of
University departments are called professors.  I very frequently correct
descriptions of me as a professor in the media and online and welcome any
others' efforts to do the same .... so long as they are not embedded in
factually incorrect messages.

On the other hand:

> http://www.methuselahfoundation.org/about.asp#Administrators lists Aubrey
> but also incorrectly: "Aubrey de Grey, the main architect of the Methuselah
> Mouse Prize structure, is a biologist and computer scientist at the
> Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge, UK..." He is neither a
> biologist nor a computer scientist *for* the Department of Genetics at the
> University of Cambridge as shown above.

I am having trouble seeing how the second sentence (which is incorrect re
the computer scientist part, but I digress) contradicts the description
of me that you quote.  Perhaps I am being dim, or perhaps I am sensing,
dare I say it, hype.

Aubrey de Grey

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