This story impresses me because the model of the amateur scientist was the original, after all. Often it was amateurs who got new fields of study rolling in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Their work was then carried forward into universities or societies dedicated to scientific research.

Newmerix Corp. Web programmer and amateur physicist David Ring has developed a new model for evaporating black holes. He explains this model in his article “ A Linear Approximation to Black Hole Evaporation,” which will appear in the August 7 issue of the Institute of Physics’ journal, Classical and Quantum Gravity and is available online. Ring is a full-time web application architect at Newmerix Corp. and father of two, but he has a serious interest in Physics. He said “it took about four months of calculations” to mature his theory that describes the dwindling mass of black holes. “Even so, passing peer review may have been the hardest part. As an amateur, every step is thoroughly scrutinized.”

Ring hopes his experience and success as an amateur physicist will keep young people interested in physics. “Many young people get excited about understanding the origins of the universe and the way nature works at its most fundamental level, but they find career opportunities are very limited,” says Ring. “There are no practical applications for these ideas, and it’s difficult to find an organization willing to provide resources for study, but that does not mean amateurs have no future in physics. An amateur can still make an important contribution.”

“Writing elegant code that is understandable to other programmers, fits into a web paradigm, and scales for the enterprise can be as subtle as General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory” says Ring.

Bravo, David Ring!