Robert Hannah is the sort of guy you just know you could have been if you had worked harder at school - and had quite a few more brains to begin with.
First and last impressions are of one very smart cookie.
So it's no surprise the University of Otago academic has found a way to secure $590,000 of taxpayer money so he can devote the next three years to studying his pet subject.
Less obvious is why the taxpayer - via the Government's Marsden Fund - might find his pet subject worth spending money on.
The title of Prof Hannah's three-year research proposal, put to the fund last year, was "Myth, Cult and Cosmos: astronomy in ancient Greek religion".
The proposal contained 16 rather complex pages outlining the aims of the research, including three full pages of his previous research publications spanning 11 years.
But apart from a reference to the possibility of Maori and Pasifika research benefiting from the study, the proposal made no specific mention of the benefits it might bring to New Zealand.
According to Marsden Fund manager Dr Dean Peterson, that is as it should be.
"The Marsden Fund is quite unique in New Zealand in that it doesn't fund research that has a direct link to any kind of social or environmental or monetary gain for New Zealand.
"It's not meant to do that."
Prof Hannah's project fits that profile well.
Linking the position of the stars thousands of years ago with the position and orientation of Greek temples, with the timing of religious events and with the myths of ancient Greece would seem to be as far removed from the concerns of the average New Zealand taxpayer as an academic could get.
It is the sort of research Prof Hannah refers to as "blue sky". There is no guarantee where it will lead.
"It's great for the Government to invest in that sort of open-ended research.
"It has to be done on a realisation that many advances in technology and science have [occurred] because of chance, serendipity, open-ended research."
Prof Hannah says the early part of last century was full of stories of chance discoveries - some of which led to the creation of new industry.
"... but you need that spark of creativity and creativity has to be open-ended.
"So the return back to the community, I think, has to be seen at various levels.
"I see it at a cultural level ... in terms of understanding ourselves as New Zealanders."
Prof Hannah says his work, like that of all his colleagues in the humanities, is about seeking to understand "the human condition".
"What is it that makes us humans? Why are we the way we are? And does that help us in the way we go forward into the future?"
Dr Peterson says the Marsden Fund is "forever being asked" why it spends money on particular projects.
"If you go through our numbers ... the Marsden Fund researchers actually probably do as much for New Zealand as any of the government-directed research."
He says one of the advantages of allowing researchers to set their own "blue sky" agendas is the enthusiasm they bring to the work.
"It's research that the researchers are actually really interested in doing.
"It's not a manipulated or a directed research topic which they may or may not be as enthusiastic about."
Prof Hannah's enthusiasm for a subject he has pursued one way or another most of his adult life verges on the overwhelming.
He recalls his first year of learning Greek at the University of Otago under the late Prof Agathe Thornton.
"In that first year, we were introduced to Homer's Odyssey and to Plato - one of his dialogues - and I just fell in love with Homer.
"I would still say if you scratch me deep enough about what it is that attracts me, it's essentially Homer.
"The whole story of Troy is marvellous, and the fact that it's still part of the popular imagination, whether it's in Hollywood or elsewhere in literature.
"Troy has captured the worldwide imagination.
"It doesn't matter where you are, that is a piece of literature that crosses boundaries."
Prof Hannah accepts classical studies need to constantly prove their relevance to the modern world and considers classics had been very good at "keeping itself alive" over the last 2000 years.
"And part of that is a matter of repackaging yourself."
Classics, he said, was still in the top 10 subjects for study at university.
"So it's not a subject to sneeze at. A large number of students do it. Our numbers are very good."
One means Prof Hannah employs to bridge the relevance gap is finding connections between Maori and Pacific Islanders and the ancient Greeks in the way they have used the stars.
"We could say how the Maori got to New Zealand is just a question of history. It doesn't matter.
"Well, actually, it does matter, of course.
"Which waka did you come on? That does matter enormously to a segment of the population and a very important segment."
He notes the increasing acknowledgement also of matariki - the Maori New Year - marked by the passage of the stars.
"There's still an awful lot of work to be done on Maori astronomy."
Prof Hannah believes there is also room to "extend the connections" between Maori and ancient Greece to look at such things as the similarity in oratory forms.
"When Maori speak on the marae, they are great orators.
"We can see from Greek oratory that's been written down that the way they spoke is very similar.
"There are great similarities between the two."
However, exploring those links will not be part of Prof Hannah's next three years - as busy as he already is "getting into the minds" of the ancient Greeks to explore how they linked Earth with the stars in their own night sky.
That will require all of Prof Hannah's knowledge of astronomy, Greek mythology, religion, cosmology and astrology - not to mention his understanding of Greek calendars and agriculture.
And it will bring into play the knowledge of his University of Kent collaborator, Dr Efrosyni Boutsikas, who has studied the positioning of Greek temples.
"You've got the temple itself, you've got how it was oriented. Is that towards a physical landscape or is it towards the celestial landscape?"
Prof Hannah uses as an example the orientation of a temple in the west of Sicily.
"... and if you stand at the eastern end of it and look out, it's facing the most extraordinary crank of hill off in the eastern distance and it's more or less aligned directly with it.
"When I first saw that, I thought that's extraordinary. Is that deliberate or is it just coincidence?"
But then you discover at the top of that hill there are warm springs and that there was an ancient religious sanctuary on it.
"And usually warm springs that come up from the ground have some association in the ancient mind with the underworld and therefore the afterlife and that sort of thing.
"Now, that's one of the projects we're going to have to dig down more into and say can we find anything that associates that particular temple with that distant horizon?"
Prof Hannah will examine the same sorts of links between the Acropolis in Athens with its earthly, mythical and celestial surroundings.
His focus there will be on the relationship between the alignment of such features as the Parthenon and the path of the Constellation of Hyades, already linked in mythology with the daughters of Atlas who, to save Athens, sacrificed themselves to the gods.
"So, it's really trying to get into their [ancient Greek] minds, through their literature, through their myth."
Prof Hannah sold the Marsden Fund's humanities panel on the idea - people such as historian James Belich.
He also convinced international researchers who undertook the peer review.
Dr Peterson: "It has to be a great idea.
"It has to be an idea that's come from a group or a researcher who can actually deliver ... but it's really about ideas.
"It's really about very, very fundamental research - those kinds of questions you always want to ask but never get funding for.
"So that's what we are trying to answer."
Marsden funding, he says, goes to New Zealand's "cream of the crop", of which Prof Hannah is "absolutely" a member.
Dr Peterson says the pay-off for New Zealand and the University of Otago is that overseas researchers always want to work with the "cream of the crop" and ground-breaking research will "almost always" be publishable internationally.
Pressed to provide stronger justification for taxpayer spending on such projects, Dr Peterson said: "Well, if you look at short term, we definitely have a real problem.
"But if you look at long term ... [there are] huge gains socially and environmentally and monetarily."
He points to the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development study, partly financed by the Marsden Fund.
The study has followed the development of a group of 1000 people since they were born almost 40 years ago.
"That's had gigantic social benefits and also economic benefits for New Zealand.
"So it's not just about nanotechnology or the latest chemistry. It's also connected to social research which we can easily argue is useful and highly beneficial for New Zealand in the long run.
"The long term benefits from fundamental research throughout the world have been shown to be a positive thing.
"I think that in itself the public does grapple with [it] but the public also accepts [it]."
He notes that only 7% of research funding in New Zealand is of the Marsden Fund's fundamental "blue sky" type.
"It's a small piece; a small slice. I'd love to see it about 70% like it is in Sweden."
While immersing himself in the intricacies of Greek cosmology, Prof Hannah, as "principal investigator" on his project, will have the more earthly concerns of paying the bills from his $590,000 grant.
A fair chunk of it will go to the university as what he calls "tax".
"Half of a Marsden goes back into overheads - office space, phone, communication, photocopying, equipment and that sort of thing.
"The other half goes into a bit of buy-out teaching ... to free me up from teaching so that I can do the research.
"We're not running as a business per se but we have to be very aware of our income and our expenditure.
Part of the grant will also go to employing a postdoctoral fellow to ensure the work done by Prof Hannah's generation continues into the next.
"The awful thing within academia is how easy it is not to regenerate your subject, your discipline. And some disciplines do fall by the board."
Prof Hannah does have other interests but sees no particular end to the line of study that has taken up 20 years of his life.
"I think what I found with this is that it's actually generated more questions. You can say, right, I've solved that problem.
"But you discover more issues around it; you think a lot more deeply about it."
• Prof Hannah was at an international symposium in Peru last weekend explaining his project to other archaeoastronomers.
The symposium devoted half a day to discussing a so-called Mayan prophecy of a global cataclysm supposedly set to occur on December 21 next year.
THE PROFESSOR
Robert Hannah was born in York, England, and emigrated with his family to Sydney, Australia, in 1963 when he was 8.
Two years later, his parents Harry and "Dinky" - "she was tiny" - and their seven sons moved to Dunedin and "fell in love with the place".
One of the reasons for the family emigrating was to improve the chances of a university education for the children and all seven, including Prof Hannah's twin brother, attended the University of Otago.
"We had the advantage of a relatively free education. We did have to pay some fees but nothing like what you do now."
Prof Hannah studied law for two years before his interest in languages - in particular Greek - took over.
"It had that fascination of a script you couldn't read very quickly. I think there's a problem-solving gene in there somewhere."
Prof Hannah also developed an interest in astronomy and that led to years of research and many publications on how people in the ancient world used the stars as timing or calendar devices.
THE MARSDEN FUND
• Marsden Fund established 1994.
• Administered by Royal Society of New Zealand.
• Society says it aspires to support "excellence-based, high risk, cutting edge research and researchers".
• It has a "special role" due to its funding of social science, humanities, culture and arts-related research.
• In 2010, the fund:
- received 1103 proposals for an estimated $600 million of funding;
- approved 102 proposals for $56 million, including $10.67 million to 19 University of Otago projects.
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