The Home Page of John E. Davis

Currently I am employed by the Center for Space Research at MIT to develop analysis software for the Chandra X-ray Observatory. I graduated from The Ohio State University in 1991 with a PhD in theoretical nuclear physics. In particular, I studied non-equilibrium quantum field theory with an emphasis on relativistic heavy ion collisions.

In recent years I have become interested in the problems associated with the analysis of X-ray astronomical data. See the Papers link for some of my contributions to the field.

I have written a number of memos pertaining to various aspects of the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Those that I believe have wider applicability may be found on the memos link.

You can find links to some of my work on antenna design, complex domain coloring, etc on my personal web site at www.jedsoft.org.

I have been involved in the free/open software movement for many years, long before it was fashionable. I have no strong philosophical or religious feelings about open software; my view is purely pragmatic: I simply believe that in most cases, where it exists, open software is better, more reliable and flexible, than commercial alternatives.

My contributions to the open software world include:

• jed, a powerful multi-platform text editor.
• slang, a programmer's library that includes a powerful scripting language with a C-like syntax.
• slrn, a powerful threaded newsreader for Unix, VMS, OS/2, and Win32 systems.
• most, a more/less style paging program that supports multiple windows and scrolls left/right.