Mark Jackson

This web project is the most self-indulgent, egotistical thing I have ever done in my life.
But the day is young. I can top it.  - Scott Adams

At right is my Caltech graduation picture, taken in the fall of 1968. I've had my hair cut by a paid professional exactly once since; a more recent photo is available.

I graduated in 1969; lived in Ruddock, majored in physics. I spent seven years at the University of Illinois - two of them as General Chairman of the Graduate Student Association - getting a PhD. I did postdocs for 15 months in France (CNRS Bellevue and the CEA facility at Saclay, both near Paris) and for close to three years in the Cornell Department of Materials Science and Engineering. In late 1980 a headhunter found me a job at Xerox in Webster, NY (near Rochester), where I'm currently a principal scientist in the Xerox Research Center Webster.

Over the years I've worked on a number of things, including ionic conduction at high hydrostatic pressure; isotope effect for diffusion in metals and organic crystals (tin in the beta phase of titanium for my PhD); electromigration in metals; nonelastic deformation in solids and thin films; xerographic transfer, process controls, and system design; color science; and image quality and system engineering. Often this has involved computers of one sort or another, starting with the IBM 7094 and running through an assortment of IBMs, SDS / XDS Sigmas, Data Generals, DECs, Honeywells, Suns, and proprietary Xerox boxes (including the legendary Alto). My computational mother tongue is Fortran, although I've also done significant chunks of work in assorted versions of Basic (shudder), Z80 assembler, Pascal, C, and Python. (I've become quite fond of the last, as one can infer from the quotation at the top of this page.) In 1983 I stumbled onto what was then the ARPAnet (initially as mjackson.wbst@parc-maxc, though Webster and PARC are a continent apart); I'm still here.

Interests:

• physics (particularly of the xerographic process), color science, dynamics and pathologies of organizations;
• political science, economic theory, general history, military history, technology and its socioeconomic effects, cognition and computation, physical interpretations of quantum theory, humor;
• traveling with my family, eating interesting food, playing contract bridge, posing and solving puzzles, skiing cross-country, following auto racing (mainly Formula One).

In July 1996 I created the original Web site of the First Unitarian Church of Rochester, NY; I've been their Web Editor ever since. (The site was professionally redesigned in the fall of 2007.)

Early in 2000 I developed patches to correct Y2K problems in the free Unix newsreader XVNews and have since taken over responsibility for the program. A small upgrade was released in May 2002; see the details on my XVNews page. I also have written patches to correct the Y2K problems in the free Unix to-do list manager, XVTDL.

I maintain the periodic Frequently Answered Questions (FAQ) posting for the newsgroup rec.autos.sport.f1.moderated, a recent copy of which can be found online.

I maintain the periodic FAQ posting for the newsgroup rec.arts.comics.strips, a recent copy of which can be found online.