The Art of Being a Scientist

Roel Snieder holds the Keck Foundation Endowed Chair of Basic Exploration Science at the Colorado School of Mines. In 1984 he received a Masters degree in Geophysical Fluid Dynamics from Princeton University, and in 1987 a Ph.D. in seismology from Utrecht University. For this work he received the Vening Meinesz award from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. In 1988 he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Université Paris VI, and was appointed in 1989 as associate professor at Utrecht University. In 1993 he was promoted to full professor of seismology at Utrecht University, where from 1997-2000 he served as Dean of the Faculty of Earth Sciences. In 2000 he was elected as Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. He is also the author of A Guided Tour of Mathematical Methods: For the Physical Sciences (also published by Cambridge University Press). He has served on the editorial boards of Geophysical Journal International, Inverse Problems, and Reviews of Geophysics. Ken Larner is University Emeritus Professor of Geophysics at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM). He received the degree of geophysical engineer from CSM in 1960 and a Ph.D. in geophysics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1970. During his final nine years with Western Geophysical Company (1970–1988), he was vice president for geophysical research, leaving to become the Charles Henry Green Professor of Exploration Geophysics at CSM (1988–2004). He served as president of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) in 1988–89. In 1996 he received the SEG's highest award, the Maurice Ewing Gold Medal, and in 2003 the Kapitsa Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences.

'… a must for any graduate student.' 'I enjoyed your approach to academic planning, problem solving and personal development. I will certainly recommend your class to other students!' '… I learned a lot of things that will carry into my future research.' Comments from students on Professor Snieder and Professor Larner's course

• 1. Introduction; 2. What is science?; 3. Choices, choices, choices; 4. The adviser and thesis committee; 5. Questions drive research; 6. Giving direction to your work; 7. Turning challenges into opportunities; 8. Ethics of research; 9. Using the scientific literature; 10. Communication; 11. Publishing a paper; 12. Time management; 13. Writing proposals; 14. The scientific career; 15. Applying for a job; 16. Concluding remarks; Appendix A. Further reading; Appendix B. A sample curriculum; Appendix C. The Refer and BibTeX format; Index.