who I am

When I was born in November 1963 my parents were students living in a two-room flat in the city centre of Würzburg, Germany. As they failed to appreciate the romantic side of having a baby in somewhat improvised settings (as described in the bible, for instance), I ended up being born at Kirn in the Hunsrück area, where my grandparents lived, and where 3/16 of my ancestors came from.

Returning to Würzburg a few months later, where we soon had to leave those two rooms and move into the attic of the same house, I attended a nursery school in this neighbourhood, a stone throw away from the grave of singer-songwriter Walther von der Vogelweide (~ 1170-1230).

life in the sticks

At age five I was promoted from student poverty to middle-class affluence and moved to a less poetic place in the middle of nowhere. As we have somehow landed in times of worsening inequality and privilege has become an explosive issue, I'll just run a quick check: As far as I'm aware, the perks of my affluenza years included fancy short-term thrills like restaurant meals and skiing trips (but less than glamorous summer hols and no air travel), along with access to books and photography equipment. Quite possibly the best accidental benefit of my upbringing was that we didn't have television until 1972, by which time I was hooked on reading, such that I never quite managed to figure out what that box was good for.

The perks did not extend to education beyond standard provision, so the main privilege I enjoyed in that realm was the availability of educated people to listen to and lots of intelligent books on the walls, many of which I read when I got bored of the steppe extending beyond the garden fence. As I have lots of French relatives, I got accidentally exposed to French at an early age, but nobody really explained to me how it works (I will return to my accidental bilingualism later).

I attended a really old-fashioned Gymnasium (not a gym, but a secondary school), which happened to be the nearest school geographically, although my parents would have preferred to send me to a comprehensive school, which were an experimental rarity at that time. At the Gymnasium, formerly a boys school specialising in classics, I learned quite a bit of Latin, which I dusted off 30 years later to teach my youngest child who was keen to learn it (and who then passed on the torch by setting up a classics club at her school). As there was a teacher shortage during my school years and sciences were not among the school's priorities, I learned a lot less biology than everybody should know. During the last two years there I spent more time on the school's magazine than on homework, writing on general cultural topics ranging from Asterix to Picasso. The name of this mag, "spectrum", anticipated what I would do later in life, but my ideas of possible careers were rather vague at the time and mostly involved sitting in a Parisian pavement cafe writing books. I mean, it worked out for Sartre and Beauvoir, didn't it?

 

student life

Sadly, there was no obvious path leading from my Latin-loving school to that aspired status of coffee-house intellectual, and I didn't quite have the drive to try any adventurous paths. Thus, I briefly flirted with the idea of studying romance languages, but I settled for the boringly pragmatic option of studying chemical engineering at Karlsruhe. (Note that a trace of my more romantic aspirations survived in the choice of location, as Karlsruhe is on the French border and only a short train ride away from Strasbourg, where I spent quite a few of my Saturdays and bought an inordinate number of paperbacks from the "collection folio". I also taught myself Spanish and have been reading books in this language ever since.)

After one term, however, my recognition as a conscientious objector came through in the second attempt, and I moved back to my parents' place to serve my time as a factotum for a local charity. Returning to university in 1984, I switched to chemistry (with some extracurricular courses in the life sciences and languages) first at Marburg, then at Regensburg, where I obtained my doctorate in physical biochemistry in April 1993, working with Professor Rainer Jaenicke on the influence of high hydrostatic pressures on proteins and ribosomes.

During my seven years of post-doctoral research at the Oxford Centre for Molecular Sciences, I investigated different aspects of protein folding, including the action of molecular chaperones, and the misfolding leading to amyloid fibrils in diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

I've always had a relaxed attitude towards my academic "career," and when writing came to dominate my life, I gave up research without too many regrets.

 

writer's life

For almost a decade after leaving school, I kind of disappeared from the writers radar, as I was busy with other things, including studies, starting a family, and trying to change the world by thinking globally, acting locally, and all that. However, the fun of writing up my first research papers reminded me of my previous enjoyment of high school journalism, and the idea of writing about science slowly established itself in my mind.

Since the beginning of 1993, I have been writing science journalism as a night-time hobby, at first for Süddeutsche Zeitung and Spektrum der Wissenschaft (not to be confused with the "spectrum" mentioned above, this is the German edition of Scientific American). These pieces eventually agglomerated into two general science books (Life on the Edge and Travels to the Nanoworld, published by Plenum in 1998 and 1999, respectively and later re-released as paperbacks by Perseus Books), each of which I prepared in an English version following the original German edition. My third book (Light and Life) is an English original published by Oxford University Press in 2003.

I have also contributed chapters on molecular computation to two books published by Wiley-VCH, co-authored an introductory textbook to astrobiology (with Kevin Plaxco), and translated a book on the chemistry of love. My most recent books include a compilation of my favourite science stories, The birds, the bees, and the platypuses (2008); German version: Der Kuss des Schnabeltiers (2009), a collection of my humour and opinion pieces in German: Neun Millionen Fahrräder am Rande des Universums, and the fully revised second edition of Astrobiology (both published in 2011). The 2012 harvest included "Von Geckos, Garn und Goldwasser: Die Nanowelt lässt grüßen" (a collection of recent nanoworld-related stories) and the German translation of the astrobiology book. A collection of biology stories (Invasion der Waschbären) appeared in September 2014, and an Arabic translation of the platypuses book in July 2015.

2002: promoting "Light and Life"
photo: I.J.Kosmowsky

While books have remained a nightly activity throughout, I switched my daytime activity to full time writing in May 2000, at first remaining at the OCMS, then (since October 2001) as a science writer in residence at the School of Crystallography, Birkbeck College, London, but now mostly based in a converted garage at the back of my garden (a space which has previously accommodated a very small publishing company).

I became a regular contributor to Chemistry and Industry, Current Biology, Chemie in unserer Zeit, Nachrichten aus der Chemie, Spektrum der Wissenschaft and Trillium Diagnostik, and have also published science journalism in a number of other periodicals including:
Bioforum Europe, BioIT-World, Biological Sciences Review, Chemistry World, Education in Chemistry, The Guardian, The Independent, Nature, New Scientist, Oxford Today, Prospect, Science's Next Wave;   Berliner Zeitung, Biologie in unserer Zeit, Gehirn und Geist, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Welt;   BioForum France, Biofutur, La Recherche, Darwin, Galileo, EOS, Mundo Cientifico ...
I write in English and German, have also tried French (with a little help from my friends and family). Parts of my work have been translated into Arabic, Dutch, French, Italian, and Spanish.

My topics come from the life sciences and physical sciences and range from quantum computation through to psycholinguistics. (Science journalists, as one of us cleverly remarked, are people who can explain to others what they don't understand themselves.) While the topics are spread out quite a bit, there are noticable lumps and bulges around the subject areas defined by my books, plus some special interests, such as stem cells or Cuban biotech. I also write opinion pieces about bioethics, science policy, and the public understanding of science, as well as columns about whatever happens to cross my mind, including the science of The Simpsons, and the chemistry of love.

 

home life

I am married with three children (born in the 1990s, all grown up now!), one of whom has autism (which has for this reason also cropped up as the topic of some of my articles). The bilingual language development of my children -- they used to speak strictly German at home, English at school -- was a major interest during the first years in England. From 1994 through to 1999 I organized a group of parents with bilingual children in and around Oxford and served as a local agony aunt for all things bilingual. Not that there is much to agonize about, because the children clearly benefit -- as long as the language inputs are vaguely balanced and kept separate. Learning about bilingualism, I realized that my own language processing is more similar to that of bilingual children than to that of monolingual late language learners, even though my childhood exposure to two languages (German and French) was anything but balanced, and I only became fluent in French at around 17. For example, when I learn a new word in Spanish, I don't necessarily link it to a German translation. Instead I hook it up to whatever is closest and most meaningful, e.g. to a Spanish antonym, to a French analogue, or to the context where I encountered the word. Thus, when I read or write in another language, I virtually never translate from or to German, but I always think in the language I use.

If you've learned anything from the previous paragraph, it's probably that you should never get me started on languages -- I can get carried away. Back to the family -- we live in a stand-alone copy of a Victorian terraced house (illustrating the eternal struggle between individualism and uniformity in our society!) within walking distance of Oxford city centre and the meadows of the river Cherwell. Accordingly, the vehicles of our household include a canoe and various bicycles (although our beloved family tandem has now left the premises), but I am rather proud of not owning a car. Being a town mouse by nature, I enjoy random walks in civilized cities.

 

musical life

I play a variety of musical instruments with a lot more enthusiasm than technique, and not helped by my not too privileged early education in music, which involved half a year of recorder group at the tail end of primary school, followed by three years of double bass lessons starting at age 16. In between, I also played around with guitars. Undeterred by my patchy track record I have been learning to play the flute and the family cello, hitching a ride when my children learned these instruments. From 2011 to 2016, I have appeared as a flautist (in a duet with the young cellist in the family) at the Oxford Music Festival each year.

Since August 2015 I have joined (with the folk-crazy young cellist) various folk sessions in Oxford, helped by a previous 1.5-year apprenticeship at the monthly Oxford Slow Session. While I don't have a huge repertoire of non-trivial tunes that I could conceivably lead in a session, I've learned to play by ear and will ruthlessly join in with virtually anything. I discovered this rather late in life, but I do love the fact that you can walk into a pub where people play music and just join in. In these times when all entertainment is manufactured, streamed, metered and paid for, this is almost a revolutionary act and I'm sure the home secretary is secretly thinking about how to ban it.

When the young cellist went off to university, I also looked around for people to play classical music with. After trying a flute choir and a tutored string ensemble, I ended up joining Cowley Orchestra with Heinrich the family cello. Cowley is a bit like the folk sessions in that we play just for fun and everybody contributes on their own level.

During the pandemic spring and summer of 2021, when orchestra rehearsals were still on hiatus, I organised chamber meetups at the lovely bandstand in Florence Park. After orchestra resumed, chamber groups have become a holiday activity bridging the gaps between school terms.

In 2022, I took charge of an old violin which my aunt had played as a young girl in the 1930s and kept in her attic since. To my own surprise, I managed to make it playable by fitting a new bridge and soundpost, and discovered that I actually enjoyed playing violin, and that it isn't nearly as difficult as people say (at least not if you've spent a decade bringing up a young cellist and sitting around in all sorts of string classes). So nowadays (2026) I typically play the fiddle at folk sessions and only use the flute as an instrument of last resort if things get too fast or too difficult. I might also play recorders, preferably alto or bass.

The experience also got me hooked on fixing fiddles, and I'm now taking on roughly one instrument per month, typically working with cheap fiddles that wouldn't be worth a professional luthier's time. I do monthly blog entries on my pirate luthier adventures.

 

leisure life

I also like to express myself visually in some form or shape. Painting or sculpting would be very attractive if time and space were available, but seeing that in recent years I spent a lot of time walking around with my son, photography was the natural medium to use, and also a hobby I have practiced, on and off, since the age of ten. I share some of my photos with the world on my flickr photostream.

Sporting achievements: none. I'm quite hopeless at anything that involves running or a team size of more than two people, so you won't see me anywhere near a football pitch, or even a football. To really get me moving, some kind of technical equipment is required, such as skates, skis, a boat, or a bicycle. I used to go skiing quite regularly between age ten and 22, and I like to think that I didn't do too badly for a resident of a flat region. As a slight consolation, I sometimes go ice-skating, preferably on natural ice, of which we had plenty in the (relatively) cold winters of 2008-10. <

Apart from the science books I get to review, I also enjoy reading novels (by female authors with a gruff voice etc. ... you get the picture!). I read most books by Isabel Allende, but I skipped the "golden dragon" trilogy she wrote for readers even younger than me, which my daughters know inside out. Other favourite writers include Gabriel García Márquez, Gioconda Belli, Anna Gavalda, Esther Freud, Hong Ying, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Sarah Waters, ... In 2008, I started to review most of the books I read on my blog (my compliance with this plan has been a bit patchy, but you will find a few reviews there).

I used to watch around a dozen movies per year on the big screen, mostly off-Hollywood, preferably either in French or in Spanish. However, by 2010 I started to notice that the movies I like to see no longer get a cinema release in the UK (see my growing list of films not shown) and the 2015 continuation, so I'm increasingly forced to watch DVDs instead. Julio Medem, for example, is a writer/director whose creativity I admire and envy in equal measure (and whose last two feature films were not released here!). Talking about movies, another favourite is "L'auberge espagnole" by Cédric Klapisch. In the final scene, the protagonist, Xavier, who has just spent an eventful year sharing a flat in Barcelona with six other students from as many different European countries, goes through a random pile of photos, starting with those of himself as a baby ("that's no longer me") and ending with those of his six international flatmates, first the three males then the three females, each time concluding: "that's me, that's me, that's me too." Well, maybe that's the best description I've seen so far of Who I Am.

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