architect honoured but not commissioned

Architect Santiago Calatrava was among those honoured by the University of Oxford this summer (along with local author Philip Pullman), but I reckon the University's enthusiasm for his work wouldn't extend to commissioning a building from him ?! There would be plenty of space at the Radcliffe Observatory site.

If you look at the world map of Calatrava's works, there is a suspicious white area just north of the English Channel. One might blame it on the heir to the throne who devours modern architects for breakfast, but I also have a nagging suspicion that those people handling big building budgets around here just don't have the courage to ask somebody like him, who would build something really special. Now I dream of a new Oxford spire ...

Shingai Shoniwa

If you don't know who Shingai Shoniwa is, you're missing something. Ok, so I'm guilty too, I actually saw her perform last week without knowing her name. She's the face (and voice, bass player, and dancer) of UK trio The Noisettes.

Here's Shingai riding the crowds:



... mingling with the audience:



... caressing ...



... and walking on the audience:



She's also been playing the bass:



showing her legs:



... and bending over backwards to make everybody happy:



And guess what, it worked. Oh, and she can sing, too.

solar century

I reviewed "The solar century" by Jeremy Leggett (ed.) for Chemistry & Industry, a nicely illustrated plea for going solar, with all the arguments why we must and how we can. That's in issue 20, (26.10.2009), p 29. Probably premium content, but here's a snippet from the end of my review:

Alas, the solar century has had a rather sluggish start in some parts of the world, but it could still happen. And with the evidence for human-induced climate change piling up, it is becoming increasingly obvious that our century must become the solar century, or more widely defined, a renewable energy century, if it isn’t to become a different book title, namely our final century.

science findings

today I was going to tell you all about my new articles that came out this week, but none of the magazines involved has updated their website so far, so there isn't much point as I can't post links.

In other science news, though, I attended a day of very interesting seminars on genomics organised by Oxford Nanopore Technologies and the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics. The event included a lab tour, which was a bit of a shock to the system -- last time I saw people sequencing genes, they cast their own gels and read out the bases by visual inspection. Reassuring to see that the centrifuges still look exactly the same. And the "lab culture" as revealed by the notes stuck to everything (one read "failure") was still pretty familiar as well.

Anyhow, I'm hoping to get a couple of stories (genome sequencing technology, epigenetics, etc.) out of this (not to mention lots of new contacts on twitter etc.), so watch this space.

the world's a stage

Third in my series "things I like the look / design of" is very much not a design but a look, namely the look of a messy stage overcrowded with the collected instruments and electronics of two bands, just before a concert. It's not just the anticipation, I really like to look at this. Which is just as well, as sometimes one stands there for two hours looking at it :)
This one is of the Noisettes, and their support act, Little Camels:



pix from the actual concert(last Thu at the Oxford O2 academy) to follow.

Imig-Clan

(last update: 18.4.2021)

Another batch of family history, this time the descendants of the Imig family (Wilhelm Imig and Regina Catharina Strack) from the Hunsrück area. His paternal lineage can be traced back to Peter Imig who was born in Fronhofen in 1620, and some other lineages go back even further (see below).

The Imigs are linked to a group of would-be migrants that left the palatinate in the 18th century but never made it to the New World. Some of them, including my ancestors, got stuck in the Simmern area, others at the lower rhine, where in 1820 a whole new village (Louisendorf) was founded as a new home for these migrants. The name Imig is still common in that area, though rare elsewhere. In spite of the failure of the 18th century emigration attempt, there are now also descendants of Peter Imig in the US.

Two of the seven children of Wilhelm Imig are my great-great-grandmothers (2. and 4.). Regarding the descendants of 3. Regina I know some details from an old letter where the family members are listed. Some descendants of 1. Julius Imig are found online. Of the descendants of the others I know only what my grandmother could remember, so if anybody can enlighten me on these, I’d grateful for hints.

I picked the couple of Wilhelm Imig and Regina Catharina Strack as a starting point, as they are the same generation as Wilhelm Düsselmann and Elisabetha de la Strada (see the Krefeld Clan), and for this generation we still have a reasonable chance to get all descendants together (as my grandmother knew most of her second cousins at least by name). Also, I think it is revealing to focus on this early 19th century generation which enjoyed a relatively stable life (mostly they stayed in one place and within the same profession for several generations around this time). The branches protruding both forward, and backward from these typically spread out both geographically (surprising amount of mobility in the 17th and 16th century!) and socially.

Regina Catharina Strack’s ancestry is linked to the Andres family, who were butchers, then innkeepers at Kirn, and in 1862 founded the family business that brews Kirner Pils to this day. Our ancestors shared with the brewers are documented at Kirn back to the 15th century. Ironically, the longest reasonably well-documented line in my family tree, after (or before) an absence of more than three hundred years spent trundling about in various parts of Germany (in the widest sense), leads back to my birthplace.

But now for the descendants:

------------------------------------

Wilhelm Imig * 28. 7.1820 Simmern + 31. 6.1877 Simmern

} oo 12. 3.1844 Simmern

Regina Catharina Strack * 21. 1.1817 Simmern + 8. 5.1877 Simmern

------------------------------------

had 7 children und ca. 40 grandchildren
(Details left in German are those my grandmother told me, so I didn't want them to get lost in translation. results of my later research are in English.):

1. Michael Julius Imig * 17.1.1845 Simmern + 15.2.1888 Viersen, Bauunternehmer
oo Anna Katharina Enders * 19.11.1850 Monzingen, + 1.1.1916 Mettmann
1.1. Katharina oo Steffan
1.2. Heinrich, Ingenieur bei Bayer Leverkusen
1.3. Regina Karolina (Lina) * 5.9.1876 Viersen + 27.1.1951 Mettmann oo Ernst Gustav Meyer (1863-1930) in Mettmann
1.3.1. Karl
1.3.2. Alfred
1.3.x. Ernst Meyer * 5.12.1902 Mettmann + 2.1987 Lahnstein oo Anna Helene Martin * 1902 Winterbach +1996 Lahnstein Tochter(Ancestry.com)
1.4. Julius (1879-1959), headteacher at Wülfrath, founder of the local history museum there , see his CV here. The town also has a street named after him.

2. Margarethe (1847-1930) oo Christoph Kauer (1845-1909)
2.1. Christoph Gottlieb Matthias *12.10.1875, + 11.11.1875
2.2. Johanna Sofia * 9.11.1876 Mühlhausen, + 26.11.1953 Hahnenbach
2.3. Auguste (1879-1952) oo (1900) Wilhelm Fuchs (1872-1963) Postinspektor Münster a.St.
2.3.1. Helene (1901-1965) oo Petz
2.3.2. Natalie “Nelly” (1906-1984) oo (1931) Christian Paust
2.4. Anna Katharina (1880-1965) oo Heinrich Thiebold (1877-1948) aus Brebach (Saar), Oberlehrer
2.4.1. Erwin * 1902, an Krupp gestorben
2.4.2. Martha (1907- ) oo Willi Helmer, Saarbrücken +1986
2.4.3. Robert * 1910 oo Aenne Schmidt
2.4.4. Herta * 1917
2.5. Louise Regina gen. Kätha (1883-1960)
2.6. Helene oo Julius Düsselmann
4.4.1. Ruth (1908-1993)
4.4.2. Werner (1911-1941)
4.4.3. Esther (1918-1983)
2.7. Karl (1888-1891) an den Masern gestorben

3. Regina Imig (1849-1900) oo Heinrich Herrmann (-1900), Gefängnisaufseher in Simmern, Koblenz
3.1. Gustav (1876-1917), Lehrer in Winningen
3.1.1. Reinhold
3.1.2. Walth
3.2. Heinrich (1878-), Polsterer, nach USA ausgewandert, dort oo
3.3. Luise (1879- ) Lippstadt
3.3.1. Luise
3.3.2. Auguste
3.3.3. Heini-Karl
3.4. Auguste (1880-1903)
3.5. Karl (1886- ) Köln-Nippes
3.5.1. Irene

4. Elisabeth = Nr. 37. (1851-1924) oo Karl Düsselmann (1841-1927)
4.1. Elise (1876-1944) oo Otto Finkensieper, Alkmaar, NL
4.1.1. Otto (1906-), Theologe
4.1.2. Kurt (1907-), Kaufmann in Scheveningen
4.1.3. Benjamin (1910-) Kaufmann in Scheveningen
4.2. Wilhelm (1878-) oo Hedwig (*1883) aus Wuppertaler Gegend. Wohnten zunächst in Neuß, 1924 nach USA emigriert
4.1. Willi *1909), Arzt in USA, kinderlos (laut Überlieferung) (=William 1909-1996, Collier, FL? oo Daisy Ethel ?) MD 1934, Univ. Rochester.
4.3. Auguste (1880-1968) oo Max Finke (1879-1914), Graveur
4.3.1. Martha (1907-) oo Friedrich Ernst Winkelmann (1905-1975) 4.3.2. Alfred (1908-1989) oo Gerda Reichenbach
4.3.3. Hilde (1910-1989) oo Christian Goetze (1908-1995)
4.3.4. Rudolf (1911-1982) oo Käthe
4.4. Julius (1883-1950) oo Helene Kauer (2.6. above)
4.4.1. Ruth (1908-1993)
4.4.2. Werner (1911-1941)
4.4.3. Esther (1918-1983)
4.5. Alwine oo Willi Esser, Sattlermeister, Neukirchen-Vluyn
4.5.1. Wilhelm (1911-) oo Gretchen
4.5.2. Juliane (1913-1925)
4.5.3. Otto
4.5.4. Margarete (1917-1964)
4.6. Hedwig oo ...
keine Kinder

5. Wilhelm Imig (1853-1901) Mörchingen, Bahnbeamter in Köln
oo Brigitte Meyer aus Metz
5.1. Rudolf (+1914)
4 Kinder
5.2. Karl (+1952)
5.2.1. Karl (1911-WW2) Gärtner in Essen
5.2.2. Elisabeth DDR
5.2.3. Helmut
5.2.4. Ilse DDR

6. Gottfried Imig (1856-1924) Anstreicher in Mörchingen 11 Kinder: Margarete, Auguste, Katharina, Karl, Josephine, Dina, Rudolf

7. Karl Imig (1860-1921) Bauunternehmer
oo Minna Hoch
His name is mentioned in the documents of two listed buildings at Viersen, one from 1905, the other from 1906 (same source but the link isn't recognised).
7.1. Karl (1890-1954) Studienrat Altphil. oo Aloisia Dietl * 1887 Oberndorf, Austria
7.1.1. Karl-Richard (1917-44) Kapitänleutnant (died on U173)
7.1.2. Renate, Ärztin in Mönchengladbach
7.1.3. Dieter, Kaufmann
7.2. Else
7.3. Johanna
7.4. Emilie oo Gillessen, Rheydt
1 Tochter, oo Oberschulrat P ..., Mainz
7.5. Martha Postbeamtin, Viersen

A note (2021) on the migration story here - given the colonies of Imig relatives in Pfalzdorf in the lower Rhine it strikes me that 5 of the 7 siblings migrated in that direction too, but not to the actual settlements. I'm assuming the oldest went to Viersen first, and may have helped the others to follow. Note that Julius died quite young in 1888, but his youngest brother followed him in the building sector, so they may have worked together at Viersen at one point. The buildings that have Carl's name attached were built long after Julius died.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

key words: family history, genealogy, Genealogie, Ahnenforschung, Familienforschung, Vorfahren, Abstammung, Kirn, Nahe, Simmern, Hunsrück, Rheinland-Pfalz,

oxford enlightenment

nights are drawing in, so I can continue my series of photographs of Oxford by night:




this one, in case it isn't obvious, is of a builder's scaffolding where someone forgot to switch off the light ...

More pix on my view profile, and a smaller selection appears in larger format on fotocommunity.

fish tank

just to mention an English language movie for a change, I saw Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank at our local picturehouse cinema last week and loved it. To save me the trouble of raving on about it, here is an excellent review by the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw, and I agree with everything he says.

Haven't figured out where the title comes from. If it's relating to anything in the film, I missed that bit. Does it refer to the bloke's fish catching technique ?

what DID the researchers find ?

In last Thursday's Guardian there is a full page in the main section on new research on the epigenome (i.e. the way the information in the genome is regulated). I read the whole page twice and still didn't know anything about what the new research was and what its results were.

The only useful information was that researchers at the Salk institute in California published something in Nature (even that was half wrong, it wasn't in the current issue of Nature, but only online in Nature's advanced online publications).

When the Guardian stopped publishing a weekly science supplement (to which I occasionally contributed), we were promised regular science coverage in the main pages instead. However, what is the use of this coverage if all meaningful content is removed from it? I mean, what is the point of spending a whole page on explaining what the epigenome is and that it may help to cure cancer and schizophrenia (which, by the way, I consider to be just hype, it may or may not do that, just as any fundamental research in the life sciences may help to find a cure for cancer), if we aren't actually told what the researchers did and what they found out?

This amounts to treating the readers as complete idiots, it's like telling them that storks deliver babies. I'll now open a new category in this blog, called storks+babies, dedicated to science reporting that has been simplified to death.

In a hurry, I only found one report that is more informative (even though it's shorter) here.

time for quinces

It's the season for picking quinces and doing something with them -- my infant quince tree has had 8 of them this year, so I made my notorious baked quince dessert the last two weekends. Here's one of the 8 before it got eaten:



Alternatively, people in the UK can also get all things quincy from this company set up by a fellow quince maniac as a retirement project.

PS my two citrus trees are also bearing fruit, but these are a little smaller than usual. lemons just one cm in diameter, oranges maybe 2 cm.

the great bluff

From 1998 to 2002, an innocent-looking post-doc from Germany committed what probably amounts to the biggest fraud in physics in recent decades, publishing over 30 forged papers in high profile journals including Nature and Science. In her book "Plastic Fantastic", Eugenie Samuel Reich unravels the reasons why this could happen. I reviewed the book for C&I, using my 1200 words length limit to the last, as I believe that this is in fact a very important question, and the answers I have seen before reading this book haven't really been satisfactory.

The most worrying aspect of the story is that he could have gotten away with it, as I have explained in this snippet:

Had he acted in cold blood and considered his best path towards the Max-Planck directorship that he narrowly missed, he would have slowed down after six or seven papers in Nature and Science. He would have revolutionised fewer areas and backed up his first breakthroughs with some real research or at least with some more real-looking data. This way he would have committed fewer errors, his string of breakthroughs would have appeared less implausible and raised less suspicion. Critics would have taken a lot longer to figure out that there was something wrong with his work. And in that extra time, some of the breakthroughs that he anticipated might actually have happened, so he would have been vindicated by other researchers.

One aspect that in my opinion has been underappreciated is that the huge rewards on offer for publishing certain kinds of results in certain journals (namely Nature and Science) put a massive amount of pressure on people working in labs with this kind of ambition (as I know from experience). Much as societies with steep social inequality breed crime, this situation will always tempt some people to forge these results if they can't get them the regular way. After writing my review of the book, I checked the reviews published in both journals, and found that this issue was neatly swept under the rug in both of them. What a coincidence.

My review is in Chemistry & Industry No. 19, p 26 (restricted access).

genome tipping point

I've been saying this in my nanoworld book already: if the living cell can read a single molecule of DNA, why can't we? Now, at last, single molecule genome sequencing has arrived, and it promises to revolutionise genome sequencing by reducing its price to a level where it can become part of standard medical provision in many countries. For instance, cancer treatments could routinely be based on comparison of the genomes of tumour and healthy cells of the specific patient, so the doctors can identify the Achilles heel of this particular tumour.

Three companies are competing with different approaches to this goal. While they weren't keen on making predictions regarding times and prices, I found out very interesting things about their technologies. My news feature on this is now out:

The $1000 genome in sight with the latest technology
The price of sequencing an entire human genome is falling fast, thanks to a new generation of sequencing technologies, but how low can it go?
Chemistry & Industry No. 19, p 14-15.
surprisingly, it appears to be open access

Incidentally, one of the companies involved, Helicos BioSciences, also has a paper in last week's issue of Nature, on sequencing cellular RNA directly (without producing complementary DNA first) and at single molecule level.
That's Nature 461, 814.