Peterhouse

Entries Tagged as 'Peterhouse'

Constantin ROMAN, Londra – Sfidarea Idiocratiei sau Breviarul unui Neconformist

February 18th, 2017 · Comments Off on Constantin ROMAN, Londra – Sfidarea Idiocratiei sau Breviarul unui Neconformist · Books, Diary, Diaspora, Education, Famous People, History, International Media, OPINION, PEOPLE, quotations, Science

Exaltat de aceste amintiri vii legate de “experienta” mea canadiana, m-am indreptat intr-o stare de euforie exaltata de adrenalina, spre sectia de vize a Marelui Comisariat Canadian (the Canadian High Commissioner). Le-am explicat ca aveam nevoie de o viza pentru un doctorat in Geofizica la Universitatea din Toronto. Cu aceste spuse le-am prezentat scrisoarea profesorului Tuzo Wilson, care-mi oferea un loc de doctorand.

Moving Here – A Continental’s Drift

February 9th, 2017 · Comments Off on Moving Here – A Continental’s Drift · Books, Diary, Diaspora, Famous People, History, International Media, PEOPLE, quotations, Reviews, Short Stories & Cameos

My greatest trouble in England arose from my refusal to give up my Romanian nationality. In retrospect this may seem bizarre, especially that I was menaced on a number of fronts: by Securitate operatives masquerading as diplomats, keen to end my flouting of socialist order and drag me back to Romania; by a prospective mother-in-law who refused to allow her daughter to marry me, unless I accepted British citizenship… and by officials of the British Home Office, who assumed that my desire to retain what I saw as my unalienable right of birth, my nationality, might stem from communist loyalties.

POETRY IN TRANSLATION (407), Anonymous, ENGLAND: “Epitaf pe o lespede de mormânt”

December 30th, 2016 · Comments Off on POETRY IN TRANSLATION (407), Anonymous, ENGLAND: “Epitaf pe o lespede de mormânt” · Diaspora, Famous People, International Media, PEOPLE, Poetry, quotations, Translations

Educated at the University of Cambridge, as a Scholar at Peterhouse. For a number of years Constantin ROMAN lived in France, Norway, Holland and Indonesia and traveled extensively, as guest speaker to Academia and Industry. He published articles in scientific journals (“Nature”, “New Scientist”, etc.), newspapers and magazines (“The Times”, “Cambridge Review”, “Encounter”, “Revista Monumentelor Istorice”, “Manuscriptum”, “Magazin Istoric”) on a variety of subjects relating to History of Art, Architecture, Conservation, Poetry and Earth Sciences (Seismology and Petroleum Geology).

POETRY IN TRANSLATION (155): Marin SORESCU (1936-1996), ROMANIA – “Passport”

July 9th, 2016 · 1 Comment · Books, Diaspora, Education, Famous People, International Media, PEOPLE, Poetry, quotations, Reviews, Translations

This passport
Is written in my bones
On my skull, femur, phalanges and spine
All arranged in a way
To make clear
My right to be man.

Four Book Reviews by Constantin ROMAN – Biographies of Hugh Trevor-Roper, Salomé Zourabichvili, George Orwell,

May 14th, 2014 · No Comments · Books, History, International Media, OPINION, PEOPLE, Reviews

When in old age he found himself the master of Peterhouse, Cambridge, he reviewed “Religion and Public Doctrine in Modern England” by Maurice Cowling, the history don, who had secured him the Mastership of the oldest Cambridge College. Cowling was the guru to such Conservative Party luminaries as Peregrine Worsthorne and Colin Welch of the Telegraph, and to that extent he was a person of influence. “The subject is the intellectual history of our time and the great spiritual crisis in which we have found ourselves,” Trevor-Roper wrote. “I find, on reading it, that this intellectual history has unfolded itself, and this crisis has been observed, and is to be resolved, almost entirely within the walls of Peterhouse.”

Cambridge History of Science – BOOK REVIEWS: CONSTANTIN ROMAN – “CONTINENTAL DRIFT – COLLIDING CONTINENTS, CONVERGING CULTURES”

January 29th, 2014 · Comments Off on Cambridge History of Science – BOOK REVIEWS: CONSTANTIN ROMAN – “CONTINENTAL DRIFT – COLLIDING CONTINENTS, CONVERGING CULTURES” · Books, Diaspora, International Media, OPINION, PEOPLE, quotations, Reviews

Prof> John D. Dewey, FRS,
(Universities of Oxford and California, Davis)

“Continental Drift” offered me a relaxing excellent read full of humour, humanity, wisdom and good science, way beyond the History of Science. This book is an Ode to the Joy of Freedom, of a kind celebrated in Enesco’s Rhapsodies, or the cosmic vision of Brancusi’s “Column of Infinity”: this is Constantin Roman’s “Ninth Symphony”. I trust the reader would share with me pleasures that have derived from reading ‘Continental Drift’.

Şerban Veliciu: Recenzie – Deriva Continetală – Coliziunea Continentelor şi Convergenţa Culturilor”, sau – “Un Român în Derivă”

October 18th, 2013 · Comments Off on Şerban Veliciu: Recenzie – Deriva Continetală – Coliziunea Continentelor şi Convergenţa Culturilor”, sau – “Un Român în Derivă” · Books, Diaspora, OPINION, PEOPLE, Reviews, Translations

Deriva Continetală – Coliziunea Continentelor şi Convergenţa Culturilor” “Un Român în Derivă” Dr. Ing. Şerban Veliciu Profesor la Universitatea din Bucureşti, Citind “Deriva Continentală” aflăm despre meandrele carierei lui Constantin Roman, cel care a reuşit să strălucească în domenii în care, la începuturi, nu promitea prea mult. Am fost amândoi colegi de an la Facultatea […]

«COMPTES RENDUS D’OUVRAGES – BOOK REVIEWS – BOEKGESPREKINGEN». Geologica Belgica,

February 28th, 2013 · Comments Off on «COMPTES RENDUS D’OUVRAGES – BOOK REVIEWS – BOEKGESPREKINGEN». Geologica Belgica, · Books, International Media, OPINION, quotations, Reviews

“Cambridge was almost like a mythical mistress, whose eroticism would excite my resolve against obstacles put in the way by sundry bureaucratic tormentors and moral dwarfs”.
This is an exhilarating book and I can fully subscribe to Professor J. F. Dewey’s view (Oxford), who wrote the Foreword of the book: “Continental Drift offered me a relaxing excellent read full of humour, wisdom and good science, way beyond the History of Science”.

Ceausescu’s “Diplomats” in Britain (Extract from: “Defying the Idiocracy” – Cambridge Memoirs, 1969-1974)

June 29th, 2012 · No Comments · Books, Diary, Diaspora, PEOPLE, quotations, Uncategorized

The burly comrade came banging at the door. There was something terribly Romanian about his banging on my door: an Englishman would have rung once, perhaps twice and after a few moments, seeing that nobody answered he will have left. I had no need to find out who it was, in order not to open the door: the Comrade was banging solidly at my door… I thought:

– This was his visiting card, the physical muscle of the uneducated, the pressing need of the apparatchik, whose mission was, come what may, to bang at my door, regardless, until somebody would respond. He should be so lucky! But what if the door gave in, under his brute force, which he might have applied at Lubyanka? These modern doors were so flimsy…

I never felt so insecure. Still, I had enough courage to tiptoe upstairs and look down from a rooftop terrace, several floors above the door. It was early afternoon and hardly anybody about, who might put him off his rude behaviour:

– Not a very good PR, Comrade, doubtless this was a textbook behaviour aquired in Moscow, with very little currency in the West!
–
Eventually he left:

– God bless him! He gave up on me, for the time being!
–
I waited long enough to make certain he had left. I went straight to the Head Porter and related the story.

– Next time he comes, you should call the police!
– What a good idea! Why haven’t I thought of it?
–
It took time to absorb the new rights to which I was entitled, as a free citizen. It felt like an animal born in captivity, which lived in a cage, for most of its life and now that the cage door was open it did not understand the benefits of Freedom…

Constantin ROMAN – Dérive continentale ou européen en dérive

July 27th, 2011 · Comments Off on Constantin ROMAN – Dérive continentale ou européen en dérive · Books, Diary, Diaspora, International Media, PEOPLE, Reviews

Voici une lecture aussi passionnante que captivante, bien qu’elle ne soit pas, comme le suggère son titre, un récit scientifique*/. Son auteur, un dissident Roumain ayant fait ses études de géophysique à Bucarest pendant les années folles du régime immonde de Ceausescu, est quand même parvenu a s’en échapper, afin de participer à une conférence à l’Université de Newcastle, en Grande Bretagne. N’étant plus retourné en Roumanie qu’après la chute du régime communiste, il est resté néanmoins un patriote Roumain, actuellement Professeur honoris causa de l’Université de Bucarest, tout en gardant sa résidence, près de Glyndebourne, dans une partie “chic” de l’Angleterre. Selon son propre récit, Constantin Roman doit être l’un des jeunes cientifiques recevant l’un des meilleurs honoraires du monde . Une fois arrivé en Angleterre, muni seulement d’un billet de £5 dans sa poche, il a utilisé son expertise, son charme, les meilleurs contacts ainsi que l’appui de l”unversité de Newcastle

Keith RUNCORN, invited Constantin ROMAN to a NATO Conference on Palaeomagnetism

comme plateforme de lancement. En parvenant à entretenir les meilleurs contacts, notamment avec le Professeur Keith Runcorn, de la Royal Society, il parvint à obtenir une bourse de recherches au Collège de Peterhouse, à Cambridge. Cela lui a permis de faire sa thèse de doctorat sur la tectonique des Carpathes et de l’Asie centrale, en étudiant des données sismiques afin d’identifier les limites et le mouvement des plaques lithosphériques. Dans ce contexte, utilisant les zones de compression et d’extension, il a défini l’existence de deux plaques lithosphériques non-rigides, les “plaques tampon”, ou “buffer plates”, du Tibet et du Sinkiang, cantonnées respectivement entre les plaques lithosphériques rigides de l”Inde et de l’Eurasie. Au début des années 70 une pareille suggestion aurait été étiquetée pour le moins comme iconoclaste. Une fois son doctorat obtenu, sous la direction du professeur Sir Edward Bullard, Roman est devenu par la suite Conseiller International de l’industrie petrolière, ayant gagné, je suppose, des honoraires prodigieux. Cet ouvrage traite essentiellement, de la folie des dictatures et des bureaucraties mais aussi de la douce vie de doctorant-chercheur a Cambridge. Quand aux détails de la bureaucratie “kafkaiesque”, les autorités britanniques semblent aussi obstinées que leurs consoeurs roumaines

Centre for Romanian Studies