By far the most read portion of any physics thesis (bar maybe the abstract) is the acknowledgement section. And when a colleague's thesis is finally finished, it is hard to resist the urge to skip to the acknowledgements to see how they considered your role in the last 3-4 years of their work. Although, usually given to family, friends, collaborators etc., occasionally thanks are given to less figurative bodies.
Here is a particularly memorable extract from a colleague at TCD ...
... My eternal gratitude to the Guinness Brewery for the indescribably ambrosian incense with which it sanctifies the grey granite doorsteps of Dublin. Manys and manys the time it has wafted me to a reverie, carried thither and yon on the quickening zephyrs with which Trinity College exhales the soft airs of its centuries of youth. A spouse and midwife to scholarship and fluency, long may it stand at St. James’s Gate ...
