Education

In a way, my education has never stopped, as I keep learning new things every day. But that’s not what this section of my website is all about. Formal education is its focus. Here are the various steps of my formal education as listed in my CV:

Abitur (high school exam plus general university access exam, see www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abitur), Leibniz-Gymnasium, Remscheid, Germany (www.leibniz-remscheid.de), 1983
Master’s degree studies in chemistry, University Bonn, Germany (www.uni-bonn.de), 1983-1989
Post-graduate PhD studies at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, Stuttgart (www.fkf.mpg.de) in conjunction with the University of Stuttgart, Germany (www.uni-stuttgart.de), 1990-1993
Business administration for scientists, bfe Institute, Stuttgart, Germany, 1994 (now apparently defunct)
Cambridge Certificate of Advanced English (www.cambridgeesol.org), 2007-2008
Spanish language courses, European reference levels A1-B2, 2008-2010
3 weeks French summer courses, Biarritz, August 2010

Two academic theses resulted from all this learning: My master’s thesis on hydrogen/oxygen fuel cells as well as my PhD thesis on “Periodic Nodal Surfaces.” Both of them I’ve posted here, each with a brief introduction. While my PhD thesis is available in an English translation which I prepared while incarcerated (the translation, not the thesis), my master’s thesis exists only in its original German. The original German version of my PhD thesis I might post as well at some point, later…

Master’s Thesis (German)

At one point I was trying to help make a European space shuttle fly – or at least stay in the skies, once it was up there. But it was not meant to be. Anyway, my master’s thesis is about fuel cells, the kind that supply space vehicles with electricity. Learn more about it here, or read the whole thing, if you feel like it (it’s in German, though)…

PhD Thesis

This is my “official” PhD thesis, prepared between October 1990 and May 1993 at the Max Plank Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Germany, in conjunction with the University of Stuttgart. It address a rather exotic topic in the field of theoretical crystallography – in case anyone knows what that is… It’s ivory tower science, paid in full by the German tax payer, to whom I apologize herewith for the resources squandered.