[PSF-Community] [gravitational-waves] A big thanks to the contributors in Python

[John Gill]

Thanks for posting this.

I am thrilled to hear that python has played such a key role in an
incredible piece of work.

And I will second your thanks to John Hunter.  

Many years ago I was looking for some plotting software and stumbled on
matplotlib.  I sent off a patch for stacked bar plots.  A few hours
later I received an incredibly encouraging email that spurred me to make
more changes.  He was a delight to work.

I remember him fondly every time a matplotlib plot renders.

John

Khaled Monsoor <k at kmonsoor.com> writes:

> hello everyone in this wonderful community,
>
> probably, we already know about the recent confirmation by LIGO about existence of "gravitational waves", a major prediction by the "theory of
> relativity" by Albert Einstein. It is a huge milestone to human endeavour to understand nature.
>
> what we may or may not know that Python was the de-facto language of software components of the experimentation. It was extensively used in
> day-to-day operations, from orchestrating the instruments[1], gathering data, analytics, to generating the finally published pretty graphs[2].
> Usage of Python, IPython notebook & matplotlib was extensive among the team-members of LIGO.[3], [4]
>
> i am not a part of LIGO, or any of the member organisations. 
> Rather, as a common enthusiast of natural-sciences as well as a open-source believer, I would like to take a moment to thank every single
> contributor of Python. Please keep up pushing your commits.
> We facilitated something bigger than us.
>
> i would also like to take a moment to remember our lost friend, John D. Hunter, the creator of matplotlib. Whom we lost in 2012 in a battle with
> cancer. Dear John, you are long gone, but you will live generations through 2-D matplotlib plots.
>
> Thanks everyone.
>
> Khaled Monsoor,
> a common user of Python
>
> refs:
> [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/45g8qu/we_are_the_ligo_scientific_collaboration_and_we/czxnlux
> [2]: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ca8jlVIWcAUmeP8.png
> [3]: https://losc.ligo.org/s/events/GW150914/GW150914_tutorial.html
> [4]: https://github.com/ligo-cbc
>
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