1) All the items pictured indeed are belongings of the professor in question.
2) The lighting is via a soft box at right and a weak fill flash at left.
3) LightZone was used as the RAW convertor and editor. Basic Channel Mixer tool was used for B&W conversion. Green was at maximum; red and blue were at lower values (stored).
3) Further sharpening (HighPass and USM) and resizing were done using The Gimp.
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