Return of the Clerihews!
As a result of an after-dinner discussion at the meeting I attended last week, I’ve decided to put a revised cosmological clerihew collection back online. I’ve removed or edited those that caused the greatest offence, and added a few new ones.
Bernard Carr
Has gone a bit far:
His Anthropic Principle
Makes theories invincible
Sean Carroll
Has me over a barrel
Because the only plausible rhyme
Plugs his new book on Time
The mind of John Barrow
Is not very narrow:
He’s more open than me
To a variable c
Stephen Hawking
Lets a machine do the talking
But even he can’t vocalize in-
side a black hole horizon.
Joe Silk
Is one of that ilk
Who writes far more articles
Than there are elementary particles
Matt Griffin
Has healthy salad for tiffin
But he’d probably expire
If something went wrong with SPIRE.
Peter Ade
Would never be afraid
To enter his name
In the citation game
Andy Lawrence
Would shed tears in torrents
If they finally got rid
Of the Astrogrid
Steve Maddox
Never eats haddocks
But he’s quite a dab hand
In the optical band
Ofer Lahav
Is awfully suave
But must be getting nervy
About the cancellation of funding for the Dark Energy Survey
Joao Magueijo
Was on the Today Show
Talking some shite
About travelling faster than light
Keith Mason
Said to Lord Drayson
“Can we have some more money?”
He replied “Don’t try to be funny…”
Andrei Linde
Felt rather windy
A peculiar sensation:
The result of internal inflation?
To rhyme Carlos Frenck
I’ve drawn a complete blenk
But I found in the lexicon
A good one for Mexican
When Andrew Jaffe
Plots a new graph he
Thinks fits his theory he’ll
Tell everyone at Imperial
Paul Steinhardt
Said “Lust not after beauty in thine heart”
But why he did so
I really don’t know
Feel free to offer your own through the comments box, after consulting the rules, although I remind you I don’t accept anonymous comments, even if they’re funny.
In the Dark 
June 18, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Mike Turner
Has a nice little earner
Secure in the knowledge he
Ushered in a Golden Age of Cosmology
George Efstathiou
Is unlikely to flatter you
Though he might object to snoring
During a seminar that’s boring
… Somehow I think Joao’s safe from this.
June 18, 2009 at 3:28 pm
I’m not sure I can let you rhyme “hale” with “real”.
June 18, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Jean-Philippe Uzan
Put some sad old blues on
When it turned out after all
That the universe isn’t shaped like a giant football
George Smoot
Really doesn’t give a hoot:
While on another planet he
Wrote a paper about non-Gaussianity
June 18, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Janna Levin
Is going to heaven
To see if she
Can feel its topology
… I’ll leave Guth, Linde and Steinhardt to the more intrepid and / or tenured.
June 18, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Alan Guth
was an outstanding youth
when he thought of inflation
the theorist’s salvation
June 18, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Peter Coles
says classical black holes
swallow all matter
and get ever fatter
June 18, 2009 at 9:00 pm
Fred Hoyle
went off the boil
with steady state theory
no Big Bang – how dreary
June 18, 2009 at 10:01 pm
Sir Isaac Newton
stuck the boot in
to Gottfried Leibniz
about infinitesimal bits
June 18, 2009 at 10:18 pm
I’m reluctant to try posting Clerihews about living scientists here, for fear of upsetting people, but I’ll try one about the author of this page.
Peter Coles
brings to his roles
in cosmology and astronomy
a great deal of bonhomie.
It might be safer to stick to people no longer living, but it may take me some time to find a rhyme for Herschel.
June 18, 2009 at 11:06 pm
William Herschel
turned commercial
as a mirror grinder
and planet finder.
June 18, 2009 at 11:21 pm
Perhaps if William Herschel
Had been more commercial
Then the 7th planet in the system solar
Might be known as Coca-Cola
June 18, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Damn, scooped, took too long to think of the last two lines.
June 19, 2009 at 3:19 am
Am I allowed to do a limerick instead of a clerihew ? Because some of the above attempts remind me of this :
A poet there was from Japan
Whose poetry just would not scan
When asked why this was
He said its because
I always try to get as many words in the last line as I possibly can
June 19, 2009 at 9:31 am
Pedro Ferreira
Is happy to share a
Thought at the top of his voice
On scalars (Ferreira and Joyce)
Sarah Bridle
Is rarely idle
But I can’t help feeling that GREAT
Is a bit late to be called 08
Subir Sarkar
Will clearly go far
He’s many a crackpot’s hero
As he really thinks Lambda is zero
Neil Turok
Is solid as a rock
But I had to learn by osmosis
His theory of Ekpyrosis
Lasenby, Challinor and Lewis,
And not forgetting Prof Hewish
Are Tonys in Cambridge a-dwelling
(Though one is a variant spelling)
Peter Coles
Rhymes neatly with “holes”
But I really don’t think that I ought
To attempt to finish that thought
June 19, 2009 at 10:47 am
Niall raised an interesting point about William Herschel: he did try to name Uranus Georgium Sidus (George’s Star) to get royal funding.
William Herschel
being controversial
named his planet, you will have heard,
after his patron, King George the Third.
June 20, 2009 at 11:41 pm
Edwin Hubble
With little trouble
Showed spiral nebulae really are
Galaxies that are very far.
Gerard de Vaucouleurs
With standard candles, not a ruler,
Concluded the Universe’s size
Was smaller than perhaps was wise.
John Bahcall
Most of all
Studied neutrinos from afar,
Especially the nearest star.
And following Joe Z above, here is one that rhymes Coles with holes:
Peter Coles
Finds many holes
In other people’s theories
Through his searching queries.
(I’m not sure any of these were really worth the trouble.)
June 21, 2009 at 9:33 am
All right, then, I’ll risk one about somebody still living, if only to criticise a policy decision of the 1990s.
Ken Pounds
Was out of bounds
When he closed, without a frown,
The Royal Greenwich Observatory down.
June 21, 2009 at 12:16 pm
[…] I’m aware that some people might have been offended by some of the clerihews recently posted on this site. Sometimes the lure of a rhyme can take these into areas best left […]
August 2, 2009 at 10:59 am
John Skilling
With MaxEnt made a killing,
And it really wasn’t taxing
for him to invent Nested Sampling.
August 3, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Steve Gull
is far from dull
He works in three fields
And produces high yields
August 4, 2009 at 11:25 am
Because of a complaint I’ve recently received – that nobody had done a clerihew of him yet – here’s another one:
John Peacock
Looks like Mr Spock
He’s renowned among peers
Not just for his ears
August 4, 2009 at 11:28 am
Alan Heavens
Is at sixes and sevens,
Perplexed by the mystery
Of the cosmic star formation history
August 4, 2009 at 11:59 am
Licia Verde
Is not at all nerdy
But she makes no apology
For being keen on cosmology
August 4, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Hold on, the originals were Cosmic Clerihews, which allowed for mainstream astronomy. I don’t think I contributed many cosmological clerihews. So here’s one.
August 4, 2009 at 1:56 pm
I’m sticking to historical figures to avoid controversy. So,
E. A. Milne
Baked in his kiln
A strange theory, with an edge too.
Or was it he who wrote Winnie The Pooh?
August 4, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Kurt Gödel
Faced a big hurdle:
That’s what anyone deserves
Who has closed timelike curves
August 4, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Luigi Bianchi
Bought a new hanky
Lest he should sneeze
On his isometries
August 4, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Kip Thorne
Would regularly warn
Students not to become slaves
In the hunt for gravitational waves
August 4, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Georges Lemaitre
said that “Peutetre,
Because of me, once some time has passed,
There’ll be a famous Belgian at last!”