Any research project has undoubtedly benefited from the assistance and contributions by people not directly carrying out the research. It is common to thank Telescope Assistants, secretaries, friends down the hall and by the water cooler, and just about anyone that the authors feel grateful to. If someone proof read your manuscript and caught serious errors, vague sentences and outright bad arithmetic, their names usually deserve to be put here.
Above all, if this researcfh was supported by a grant from NASA, the National Science Foundation, or special internal research funds at the institution where you work, mention that fact here. As you see from my Acknowledgments above, I neglected to note that the research was supported by funds from the Office of Naval Research. This omission has been bugging me for years!!! ( Not really! ).
The problem with this section is that it is usually the absolutely last thing you ever write, and by then you are pretty sick of the paper and anxious to get on with other projects.
Acknowledgments are usually very bland from the standpoint of the reader. They follow a very simple code. State the grant name and then state the names of the individuals you wish to recognize for whatever reason. But sometimes in the literature you can come across the rare exception that lets you glimpse just for a brief moment, the feelings of the author. These are VERY hard to find. I searched through several thousand articles in the Astrophysical Journal between June, 1989 and August, 1994 and came up with only 18 articles that departed from the above formula. I will give you the text of them below:
(ApJ 388, p.621) by Jacobus H. Valk et al. "Co-author Chet B. Opal died the end of a long illness during the process of analyzing the data. He participated actively until only a few weeks before his death and made many contributions to this study. He had studied comets throughout his career and it seems only appropriate that this should prove to be his last project"
(ApJ vol. 391, L13) by T. Davidge and J. Nieto "It is with deep regret that we report the death of Jean-Luc Nieto, who was killed in a climbing accident near Pic du Midi early in 1992. Jean- Luc's enthusiasm for research, and the unique insights he provided to a diverse range of astronomical problems, will be greatly missed by astronomers everywhere."
(ApJ vol. 400, p.280) by Alvio Renzini et al. "We are most indebted to Icko Iben for havinh kindly provided to us his stellar evolution code...His code proved to be the least affected by numerical microquakes...We only regret that being absorbed in other projects, it took us seven years to make good use of such a flexible and powerful tool"
(ApJ vol. 351, p. 62) by R. Buta "I would like to thank Dave Carter, Geoff Bicknell, and Shuan Hughes for obtaining the CCD observations of NGC 3081 for me while I was in a hospital recuperating from an accident incurred during my observing run"
(ApJ vol. 399, p. 444) by Jeffrey Munn "Finally, I wish to thank my wife, Suzanne, for her patience and support over the last two years, and my parents and family, for their patience and support over the last 30 years. Also, thanks to my fellow graduate students and friends, who have made graduate school enjoyable; in particular, Steve, Sean, Matt, Tank, Blondo, Rich and Pat. Additional thanks to John Blondin for providing the foosball table."
( ApJ vol. 422, p. 688) by Michael Nowak "Heartfelt thanks are owed to Dr. Brian Vaughan, who has taught me everything I know about cross spectral densities...A debt of gratitude goes to Prof. Peter Michelson for sharing his understanding of noise, and other things that go bump in the night"
( ApJ vol. 355, p.693) by P. Cally "The author is indebted to R. Grant Athay and Russell Fiedler for many useful criticisms of earlier versions of the theory presented here. He would in particular like to apologize to the former for being unable to bring himself to use cgs units."
( ApJ vol. 248, p.1166) by D. J. Cutler et al. "We are indebted to J. West and A. larson for technical assistance, as well as to the rest of the seven dwarfs who built an astrophysics laboratory in a difficult and unpleasent place". ( namely the MAyflower Mine in Utah!)
(ApJ vol. 213, P.15) by Jorge Melnik "I also wish to thank Chip Williams for his cheerful assistance at the telescope and for the most incredible stories during many, many cloudy nights. His friendliness and his legendary Chiparritos transcend the frontiers of Palomar Mountain."
RETURN to the Paper topic index.