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 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.