[jvkersch]

It's worth checking out Peter Woit's homepage at http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/ and looking beyond the blog and his role as a string theory skeptic. He teaches a number of classes and has a book about quantum mechanics and representation theory that has gotten a lot of favorable reviews. Not sure I'd classify this guy as your average helpdesk guy ;)

[auntienomen]

He's not an average help-desk guy, but he's not a first rate researcher either. He produced some good lattice qft work in the late 70s/early 80s, then worked unsuccessfully on Chern-Simons theory for a while. Since then he hasn't produced any papers. For a PhD researcher, this is basically 'failure to launch'. (And to be fair, this is probably the most common outcome for STEM PhDs.)

[erric]

I inferred doing the computer support was something he just liked to do. Everyone needs a hobby :)

[jvkersch]

That's a good point, and probably what GP was hinting at. Thanks for pointing that out :)