Who is Rami Rekola?
Dr Rami Rekola, PhD, FRAS, is the founder and sole member of Drakanon and serves as its director. He was born and educated in Finland — you know, that rich little country in northern Europe, with forests and lakes everywhere, some of the happiest inhabitants in the world, the best education in the world, Nokia, the moomins, F1 drivers, Jean Sibelius, clean nature... During senior secondary school (grades 10-12 in Finland) he spent one year as an exchange student in Texas and graduated from the Lorenzo High School. This year gave him a solid understanding of and love for English language.
Back in Finland he graduated from his Finnish senior secondary school and enrolled to study physics in the University of Turku. He ended up becoming an astronomer and working in Tuorla Observatory, the astronomy unit of the University of Turku. Eventually he graduated as a doctor of philosophy with a prize-winning thesis "Distance Determinations to Nearby Galaxies".
As a professional astronomer Dr Rekola is a member of the International Astronomical Union, the Finnish Astronomical Society and the Tuorlan Astronomical Society, and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (FRAS).
During and after his studies he became involved in the Tuorla Observatory public outreach efforts. He designed a presentation that was given to visiting groups. He himself took over a hundred such groups around the observatory grounds and explained how it became the most important centre of astronomy in Finland and what kind of science was done there. He was instrumental in launching a bold project to build a visitor centre for the observatory and founding the Tuorla Planetarium as a precursor to the actual visitor centre.
Dr Rekola founded an education and public outreach company, Astromatkat (Astro Tours) in 2011 and concentrated his efforts in education consulting, teaching and public outreach. Ever since the beginning of 2012 he has also served as the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Science Outreach Network representative for Finland. In this role he has translated the nearly weekly newsletters to Finnish and maintained connection with Finnish media.
A major change in his life took place in 2013 when he got married with an American woman and moved to the United States of America. In the USA, he worked some time at the Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawai'i and was appointed as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
He moved to Pennsylvania with his wife in summer 2015 and decided to go private again. He founded Drakanon and provides its various services in the Lehigh Valley region, Pennsylvania, USA, and in the United Kingdom and Finland. Dr Rekola's wife is descended from people who emigrated to the USA from Ikaria, a Greek island in the Aegean Sea. One of the most prominent ancient monuments on the island is the partially ruined watchtower called Drakanon, which served as an inspiraton for the name and logo of Drakanon.
Rami T. F. Rekola
Dr Rekola was born Rami Tapani Rekola. In 1998 he officially adopted a second middle name (as permitted by Finnish law), which has been given in an unbroken chain to male descendants in the family since 1300's. Hence his formal name became Rami Tapani Fritiof Rekola. His grandparents didn't give the name to his father, who consequently didn't pass it on at Rami's birth. When Rami adopted Fritiof as a middle name, his father also changed his former middle names to Fritiof, hence restoring the unbroken chain.
