I had the chance to be taken from October 1996 to September 2001 for a PhD in Astrophysics at UMIST, Manchester, UK. I thank profusely Prof. Tom J. Millar for offering me this great opportunity.
In order to finance this PhD, I was registered as a Part-time Research Assistant. My task consisted of updating the UMIST Kinetics Database, which is renowned internationally and used worldwide. For me, it truly was an honour.
My PhD, as a result, was spread over 4 years instead of the usual 3. I am glad now that I had all this time for myself, because even though I had a tough time with my original supervisor Dr Isabelle Cherchneff, who deserted UMIST halfway during my PhD and left me stranded with my research, I managed to make these years some of the best of my life, intellectually speaking.
The aim of my PhD was to produce a computer model that could explain why carbon dust (soot) forms in the hot wind of some carbon-rich Wolf-Rayet stars. Fascinating, isn't it?
Because not everybody knows about Wolf-Rayet stars and because the problem of dust formation from a gas phase is not trivial, especially in the dynamical wind of Wolf-Rayet stars, I invite you to read the following article to acquire the essence of my work. This article was published in the Physics Research Newsletter of UMIST, No.5, in January 1999. It is a bit dated, but I cannot publish my whole thesis on the web, so it will have to do.
I provide some conclusions in my Curriculum Vitae.
Some images used herein were obtained from Xara Webster 1.0 Feb 17 1997 (1151), Copyright © 1996 Xara Ltd, Gaddesden Place, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire HP2 6EX, UK.