Who is John P. Pratt?

Dr. John P. Pratt

I love puzzles, science, math, calendars, and enjoy connecting ideas from a wide variety of disciplines. I have bachelor's degrees in physics and math from the U. of Utah, and a Ph.D. in astronomy from the U. of Arizona. I taught astronomy at a state college and keep notes for that class on this web site. I also do computer programming, have three software patents, and host a few websites (and a page for my brother's very inexpensive and energy efficient homes). For sports, I used to run a table tennis club.

Most of my publications have been about chronology, so you probably don't want to read them. I have written a calendar conversion spreadsheet to convert from our calendar to others but it no longer works on the latest browsers because they've stopped supporting Java. It still works great on older browsers.

I created a pictorial periodic table which I hope might make chemistry more fun and which can be used as memory pegs for memorizing long lists of other items too.

If you like tough brain teasers, I think I have found a great logic puzzle in the Bible which you might want to try.

There is a brief life sketch of me and of some of our family ancestors in the genealogy section of these pages. Also included are some conversations my mother wrote down between my brother and me when we were very young which reveal some of our lifelong interests. There are also several anecdotal vignettes from my life. And my last two resumés before I retired in 2009 are included, one as a research scientist and one as software developer.

Here is a link to our family photo which was the last where the entire family got together. They are now spread out all over the country.