I was born (in 1963, by the way) and spent my youth in the beautiful Westphalian town of Gütersloh. After four years of elementary school at the "Altstadtschule", I went on to the Evangelisch-Stiftisches Gymnasium, and finally obtained my "Abitur" in 1982.
More on Gütersloh
After matriculation, I moved to Bonn, a very nice city at the banks of the river Rhine, where I studied physics at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität. I worked in the group of Vladimir Rittenberg in the Physikalisches Institut on quantum spin chains, theory of phase transitions and connections to conformal field theory. Here, I obtained a Diploma degree (Dipl.-Phys.) in 1988 and, eventually, a PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) in 1991. During the first years in Bonn, I was still closely tied to Gütersloh because I worked as a part-time piano teacher at the local "Musikschule Gütersloh e.V.".
In September 1991, I started a two-year postdoc position at the Department of Mathematics (now incorporated within the Department of Mathematics & Statistics) at The University of Melbourne. My stay was financed by a "Forschungsstipendium" of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). Here, I worked with Paul A. Pearce on exactly solvable models of statistical mechanics.
After the two years in Melbourne, which I really enjoyed very much, I still managed to find my way back to Europe. From September 1993 until April 1996 I lived in Amsterdam, working as a postdoc in the Instituut voor Theoretische Fysica at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. In the group of Bernard Nienhuis, I worked mainly on Bethe ansatz solutions of solvable lattice models and on aperiodic Ising models. This time I got paid by the European Community "Human Capital and Mobility" programme and, afterwards, by the Stichting voor Fundamenteel Onderzoek der Materie (FOM) which is part of the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO).
After that I worked in the Institut für Physik at the Technische Universität Chemnitz, until end of November 2000. In the group of Michael Schreiber, I tried to understand physical properties of quasicrystals. Our project, which is still continuing today, was part of the Schwerpunktprogramm "Quasikristalle: Struktur und physikalische Eigenschaften" of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). During the small amount of my time that was not devoted to work or to my family, I started to improve my musical skills by once more enrolling as a student, this time to be trained as a cantor, at the Technische Universität Chemnitz. Occasionally, you could hear me play the organ at the service at the church Markuskirche in Chemnitz. In January 2000, I finally finished the "Habilitation", yet another academic degree in Germany which is sort of required if you ever dreamt of becoming a real German professor. I obtained the venia legendi in March 2000, so for the following months in Chemnitz I was allowed to call myself "Privatdozent".
After spending more than four years in Chemnitz, I moved to Milton Keynes. I am now a Reader in the Department of Mathematics at the The Open University, and recently as a Reader in Mathematics. Besides continuing and expanding my research activities, supervising research students, authoring distance teaching material and teaching at summer school, I have become increasingly involved with administrative duties, in particular since January 2004 when I took up the role of Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Mathematics & Computing — my term has been extended to the end of July 2007 (for the time being), and I am currently busy with preparation for the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise. Outside the University, I am currently Honorary Secretary to the IoP Mathematical and Theoretical Physics Group, and a Parent Governor and Chair of Finance, Premises and Personnel Committee of the Governing Body at Heronshaw School. Just after starting in October 2003, I had the pleasure to experience an OfSTED inspection. The OfSTED report turned out to be (deservedly!) positive in general, though apparently the Governing Body could have been more efficient at demonstrating its efficiency (well, we're working on it...).
