Bill Brewer's Personal Home Page

Good Guys: Socrates; Descartes; Tycho Brahe; Copernicus; Galileo; Kant; Kepler; Newton; Lavoisier; Roemer; Darwin; Iguanodon; Mendel; Freud; Wittgenstein; Curie; Piltdown; Einstein; Heisenberg; Oppenheimer; Watson; Crick; HAL.

Places: Stonehenge; Kings College Chapel; Ven, Sweden; Orkney Islands; Agora, Athens; Cavendish Laboratories; Minoan Crete; Fermilab; Mauna Kea Observatories; Frombork, Poland; Kaliningrad; Burgess Mountain; Scale Model Solar System, Peoria; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Harvard University; Urbana, Illinois; University of Illinois; Cambridge, England; Cambridge University; Aarhus, Denmark.

Bill Brewer on top of Carn Menyn,
Preseli Mountains, South Wales,
the source of the Stonehenge bluestones

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Hello world! You have found your way to Bill Brewer's personal home page.

If you were looking for me in my capacity as a Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois, here is the link to my stuffy (but fact-filled) professional home page

Email: wfbrewer@uiuc.edu

Family

I am married to Ellen F. Brewer. We have two sons, John Brewer and Robert Brewer

To get a thumbnail overview of my life you might start by reading my Harvard Class Reports for my 25th and 35th class reunions.

Another approach might be to read about Bill and Ellen's Good Guys misadventures--including our trips to the house Wittgenstein built for his sister in Vienna, to Galileo's index finger in Florence, to the ruins of Tycho Brahe's observatory on the island of Ven, to the source of the Stonehenge bluestones in the Preseli Mountains, and to many other Good Guy sites. [Note--this is quite long.]

A recent variant of our traditional Good Guys tour has been our travels through Scale Model Solar Systems. This has led us to push our trusty Toyota to speeds in excess of 10 times the speed of light and to sleep within a few million miles of the planet Pluto.

Another variant of our Good Guys tours has been the (now successful) chase after a Total Solar Eclipse.

We spent two wonderful sabbaticals in Cambridge, UK. We love this place. Share our experiences with the Backs in winter, Cambridge traffic, Heffers, heated towel racks, Kings College choir, British plumbing, Stephen Hawking, punting on the Cam, Newnham, the Old Cavendish Labs, and more.

Coping with Sabbatical in the UK. After our first Cambridge sabbatical in 1989 we wrote up a brief summary of what we wish we had known before we had headed out. This is now somewhat outdated but gives some still helpful advice about banking, mail, computers, shipping, driving, etc.

Ellen spent part of a year in Copenhagen when she was 8 years old. We spent a summer in Denmark and have very warm feelings about this special country.

Harvard College has played an important role in my life. It was the source of a fine undergraduate education and the place I met Ellen. Harvard stories can be found in the accounts of our visits to Harvard's 350th birthday party, to our 25th Class Reunion, and to our 35th Class Reunion.

Back when the memories were still very vivid we wrote up our advice about child rearing in a Letter to New (and Expecting) Parents.

Read about the Great Kransekage Hunt.

Read a very idealistic, but nonpragmatic, Dear Colleague letter Bill wrote to the members of his Department in 1972. Would you promote this assistant professor?

Reading List: Academic Novels (academic satires, campus novels)

If you prefer pictures you can just click your way through the pictures that are linked in the text.


Bill in front of Harvard gates?

Bill's 1960 probation letter from Harvard College

Bill standing on Diamond Head

Bill standing in front of the Piltdown Pub

Bill playing with hot lava from Kilauea volcano

Bill standing among the observatories on top of Mauna Kea

Bill standing on the source of the Stonehenge bluestones in the Preseli Mountains

Bill standing in front of Tycho Brahe and Kepler in Prague

Bill at the brook near Herresvad Kloster where Tycho Brahe discovered the Supernova of 1572

Bill in front of Kant's tomb in Kaliningrad (Koenigsberg).

Bill on top of Copernicus' tower in Frombork.

Bill in front of Saturn in Peoria.

Bill in front of Saturn in Boston.

Bill in front of Saturn in Boulder.

Disappointed Bill -- no Saturn in Uppsala, Sweden.

Bill with Pluto in Delsbo, Sweden.

Bill on the deck of the Stella Solaris in the Black Sea.

The August 11, 1999 Total Solar Eclipse on the Black Sea.

Bill's office door

The posters outside Bill's office.

Bill's academic family tree

Bill's baby picture (slipped that one right by you--did I?)

Ellen's engagement picture in 1963.

Ellen in the Rocky Mountains.

Ellen's 1999 birthday Kransekage

John John and Stacy

Robert and Yuka

My Mother


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