Just usual, real people

Have you ever thought that all these authors in the list of references of your thesis are real and usual people, just like you and me? Well, of course I don’t count literature written half a century ago, but in most cases, in fact, we refer to relatively fresh articles or books, don’t we? It’s like to casually mention a person in a conversation with friends “You know, Rui recently said…” – the same thing is in thesis, just a bit more formally.


I’ve got this idea when the founder of ZEEF showed an example of a page of one person. When I saw the name – I was so surprised! It was a professor, whose articles were the basis of almost the whole chapter of my thesis! And there he is – the same as all the other users, creates a ZEEF page!

The funny thing is that now this guy is not only in the reference list of my thesis, but also on the main use case of my research =)

Guys, I thought it would be really entertaining. Take any author in the reference list of your thesis (and the more important he is, the better!), and find this person on the Internet or social networks. This will be surprising, I promise! First, you will realise that the person doesn’t look like you have imagined. And secondly, you will realize that there is actually nothing special about this guy (except

education and publications you have referred to). In general, there are no differences between you and him – you both are human beings! Who knows, may be somebody will put your name in their reference list in the future =)

When I saw the author from my list of references, I felt that the world is so small. We’re all the same, and we are just 7 billion – a small anthill! (kidding). It is like to imagine the size of the universe and start seeing the world in a completely new way – awesome.