Who was the strange, enigmatic old man present at the nocturnal meeting hosted by old Nebuzaradan, one of Babylon’s great princes? Boaz the orphan boy and one of the Judahite exiles residing in Babylon, was also in attendance, together with the elders of his community. As the night progressed, the two old men unfolded the story of the Great Siege of Jerusalem (587 bce), the destruction of the city by the Babylonian army, the burning of Solomon’s Temple and the pivotal role played in these events by the great prophet Jeremiah. The story kindled in Boaz a desire in later life to return and take part in the rebuilding of Jerusalem, the Temple, and its walls.
About the author:
John Gibbon was born in 1949 in Manchester, UK. He was an undergraduate at the University of Birmingham (1967-70) and then received his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Manchester in 1973. He has lived in London since 1980 when he joined the Mathematics Department of Imperial College London. He was promoted to full Professor in 1990 and served as a Consul (2007-10). Consuls are senior Faculty who are elected to manage issues such as the academic promotions process, academic standards in appointments and the award of prizes. He is now an Emeritus Professor of Applied Mathematics.
His area of research is in the theory of turbulent fluid flows, with current collaborators in the United Kingdom, United States, France, and India. He has published more than 125 research papers and coauthored two books Applied Analysis of the Navier-Stokes Equations (Cambridge University Press, 1995) and Nonlinear Waves and Solitons (Academic Press, 1983) and is the author of Science and the Knowledge of God (Lampion Press, 2015)
Enjoy a sample of Baruch’s Tale:
