Astronomer Mike Merrifield had terrible handwriting and dreamed of captaining a submarine - now he's an astronomer and world expert on galaxies. Episode sponsored by Jane Street - check out their latest opportunities - https://www.janestreet.com/join-jane-street/overview/ Professor Michael Merrifield - https://about.me/michael.merrifield Mike's Twitter - https://twitter.com/AstroMikeMerri Mike Merrifield Video Playlist - http://bit.ly/Merrifield_Playlist Sixty Symbols - Physics videos, many featuring Mike - https://www.youtube.com/user/sixtysymbols Deep Sky Videos - https://www.youtube.com/user/deepskyvideos Messier Objects Playlist - http://bit.ly/MessierObjects Ralph Merrifield - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Merrifield Ralph Merrifield author page on Amazon - https://amzn.to/3Hff0Gj Galactic Astronomy by James Binney and Michael Merrifield - https://amzn.to/3Xme4Fs Hand-written version of Mike's 'Good Will Hunting' paper - https://brady-haran.squarespace.com/s/MerrifieldPaperHandWritten.pdf And here is the published version - https://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1990AJ.....99.1548M You can support Numberphile on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/numberphile) like these people - https://www.numberphile.com/patrons With thanks to SLMath - https://www.msri.org