Humboldt Newsletter 2001
Compiled by Gernot R. Wieland in July 2001

My apologies for sending this Newsletter later than any previous one. Here are my excuses: first, there was the conference in Ottawa, for which I prepared a paper; second, I copied all the e-mail addresses from the booklet which we all received from the Stiftung and am thus sending this to more recipients than any previous mailing; third, as you can see, I am sending this on a list and had to find out the intricacies of establishing and using a list; fourth, my term as Assistant Dean came to an end on 1 July 2001 and wrapping up the loose ends of that job interfered with writing the Newsletter; and fifth, there were some (positive) events in my personal life which also took their toll on my time. Next year I hope to issue the Newsletter in May again as usual.

The "Workshop" in Ottawa : it was a delight to see so many of you there, and finally to get to know the faces behind the names. I assume I speak for all of you if I say that we are profoundly grateful to the Stiftung for having brought us together, for having given us the opportunity to exchange our latest scholarly news and views, for wining and dining us, and for getting Dr. Kinderman to educate and entertain us in the magnificent setting of the Museum of Civilization. And please don't forget: in return for the Stiftung's generosity, let us all speak to our under-forty colleagues and sing to them the praises of the Humboldt-Stipendium. The number of applicants from Canada has dropped drastically; the Stiftung needs our co-operation to get it to rise again.

And now for the latest news from individual Humboldtians. I had sent out the request for news via e-mail. Since I had only some seventy of the potential four hundred or so e-mail addresses, the Newsletter is not as comprehensive as it might be. Next May, I hope, this will change with many more of you sending me your latest news on publications, honours, promotions, etc. The Newsletter resulting from your e-mails helps us to keep in touch with each other, and it helps the Stiftung to make its case to the German government that it really is the wonderful institution which we all know it to be.

Ibrahim ASSEM (U de Sherbrooke) has authored one and co-authored three articles with titles such as "The simple connectedness of a tame tilted algebra," "Tilting up iterated tilted algebras," and "Simply connected algebras." Moreover, asof 1 January 2000 he has become editor of Annales des Sciences Mathematiques du Quebec.

Ashok AKLUJKAR (U of British Columbia) has had a busy year with presenting papers in Italy (April 2000), Germany (June 2000), the US (Sept 2000 and March 2001), and Canada (March 2001). During the same period he published four articles with titles such as "Love or leave (?): Bhartr-hari's (?) dilemma," "Theepistemological point of view of Bhartr-hari," and "The verse bhuyasayat-prakasena ... in a manuscript of Skanda-Mahesvara's commentary."

Paul ARMINJON (U de Montreal) has pursued his work on Numerical Methods in Computational Fluid Dynamics, and has published two papers in2000. He has been invited to the universities of Freiburg and Würzburg to present lectures, and he has given papers at other international conferences, including one in Magdeburg .

Michael BATTS (U of British Columbia) has published the book Fünfzig Jahre IVG: Die Geschichte der Internationalen Vereinigung für Germanische Sprach- undLiteraturwissenschaft as well as two articles on "Autoren und Stoffe in germanistischen Dissertationen in Kanada bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg" and " Canada 's otherliteratures."

Rene T. BOERE (U of Lethbridge) presented conference papers in Honolulu and Calgary , andco-authored three papers on topics such as "Electrochemistry ofredox-active group 15/16 heterocycles" and "Preparation, x-ray structureand dynamic solution behaviour of N,N',N''-tris(2,6-diispropylphenyl)guanidine and its reaction with molybdenumcarbonyl." On 1 July 2000 he was promoted to full professor. Congratulations!

Vit BUBENIK (Memorial U) has published the monograph Morphological and Syntactical Change in Medieval Greek and South Slavic Languages, as well as four chapters in books. Representative titles are "On the evolution of diathesis and aspect during the Middle Indo-Aryan period," "Prakrits and Apabhrams'a," and "Was Proto-Romani an ergative language?". And he presented papers in Edinburgh , Sofia and Brno .

Dieter BUSE (Laurentian U) has co-edited the book Whose National Security?: Canadian State Surveillance and the Creation of Enemies. He has published four articles with the following titles: “Many Friedrich Eberts: Critical Thoughts on an Evaluation of an Exhibition,” “Domestic Intelligence and German Military Leaders,” “Reichspräsidentschaft und neue Exekutive 1919. Friedrich Ebert und die Wendepunkte deutscher Geschichte,” and “Observing the Political and Informing on the Personal: State Surveillance Systems in a European Context.”

Tucker CARRINGTON (U de Montreal) co-authored ten articles with titles such as "V3: Structure and vibrations from density functional theory, Franck-Condon factors and the PFI-ZEKE spectrum," "The utility of constraining basis function indices when using the Lanczos algorithm to calculate vibrational energy levels," "Calculating interior eigenvalues and eigenvectors with an implicitly restarted and a filter diagonalisation method," "A new iterative method for calculating energy levels and wave functions," and "A symmetry-adapted Lanczos method for calculating energy levels with different symmetries from a single set of iterations."

Eric CARSTENS (Queen's U) reports of two co-authored articles: "Identification and molecular characterization of the Choristoneura fumiferana multicapsid nucleopolyhedrovirus genomic region encoding the regulatory genes pkip,p47, lef-12 and gta" and "Cricket-like paralysis viruses." He is sole author of the articles "Baculoviruses," and "Genus: Nucleopolyhedrovirus (Baculoviridae)," and co-editor of the Seventh Report of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses. He is looking forward to a sabbatical in 2001- 2002, which he will spend at the Universität Konstanz with the goal of analyzing the building of the initiation complexes at the start points of viral DNA replication. In 1999 he was elected to the Executive Committee of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses and to the Advisory Council of the International Union of Microbiological Societies, and will retain these positions until 2002.

Konrad COLBOW (Simon Fraser U) entered retirement as of 1 September2000, but that did not stop him from teaching a third-year course in the Department of Physics. Moreover, he has been re-elected Director of the "Working Opportunity Fund," which provides venture capital for small B.C. high tech companies. Despite his retirement, Dr. Colbow will be kept busy.

Bruce DAVIS (Alviva Biopharmaceuticals) resigned from the Neuropsychiatry Research unit at the U of Saskatchewan in September 2000 and took up the position of Vice-President, Chemistry and Intellectual Property, at Alviva Biopharmaceuticals Inc in Saskatoon . He is co-founder of this research and development company which owns the right to a number of drugs which show potential for the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders. In October 2000 Alviva signed a Strategic Partnership agreement with Schwarz Pharma, a company based in Germany , to develop one of these drugs for clinical trials and eventually for the market.

Marc GAUDRY (U de Montreal) started a research group called "AgoraJules Dupuit" with Professor Abraham Hollander. The research centers on transportation economics (seewww.crt.umontreal.ca/crt/AgoraJulesDupuit/). In 1999 - 2000 he hosted Claudia Keser, a Feodor Lynen Fellow from the University of Karlsruhe . And he co-edited the book Structural Road Accident Models: The International DRAG Family, which contains the work of 18 researchers belonging to North American and European countries and uses DRAG (= un modèle de la Demande Routière, des Accidents et leur Gravité) methodology to analyze road accidents.

Jean GRONDIN (U de Montreal) published the book Einführung zu Gadamer (a self-translation of his Introduction a Hans-Georg Gadamer) and had his book Hans-Georg Gadamer: Eine Biographie translated into Spanish and published as Hans-Georg Gadamer: Una Biografia.

Waldemar LEHN (U of Manitoba) completed a 9-year term as Associate Head of Electrial Engineering and returned to the fold of regular professors. He has published thea rticle "Skerry-like images and the discovery of Greenland ," andco-authored the article "Waerachtighe Beschryvinghe van het Nova Zembla Effect." He also gave a paper on "Long-Range Superior Mirages" in Alberta .

George LEIBBRANDT (U of Guelph) reports of four articles published in2000: "Split dimensional regularization for the Coulomb gauge at twoloops," "Two-loop quark self-energy in a new formalism: Renormalization of the quark propagator in the light- cone gauge," "From obscurity to two-loop renormalizability: Progress in the light-cone gauge," and "Lessons from the light-cone box." He also assisted the Executive Director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, of whichDr. Leibbrandt is a founding member, in the development and implementation of the Institute's scientific agenda. The official opening of the Perimeter Institute is planned for Fall2001.

Hans MACHEL (U of Alberta) was enjoying a brief sabbatical from Jan to May 2001, much of which he spent in Heidelberg . For the year 2000 he reports of four refereed co-authored publications and of seven co-authored conference abstracts. Sample titles are "Origin and evolution of saline groundwater in the Münsterland Cretacious Basin," "Tectonically induced fluid flow in Devoniancarbonate aquifers of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin," and "Products and depth limits of microbial activity in petroliferous subsurface settings." He is the sole author of "Application of cathodoluminescence to carbonate diagenesis," and of three non-refereed publications, of which one is a 203 page Laboratory Manual. He conducted a2-week field geological school in Barbados in March 2001, and went to two conferences in Bali in October 2000.

Rolf MATHEWES (Simon Fraser U) reports of three co-authored articles with the titles “Holocene treeline and climate change in the subalpine zone near Stoyoma Mountain, Cascade Mountains, southwestern B.C.,Canada,” “Early Eocene Insects from Quilchena, British Columbia, and theirpaleoclimatic implications,” and “Holocene climate in the south-central interior of British Columbia.” In August 2000he was appointed Associate Dean of Science. Congratulations (?)!

Lawrence MCINTOSH (U of British Columbia) received a CIHR (Canadian Institues of Health Research) Scientist Award (Congratulations!) and are newed 5-year research grant from NCIC (National Cancer Institute of Canada) to study the "Structural bases for the regulation of the Ets family of transcription factors."

Anthony MOFFAT's (U de Montreal) two-year Killam bursary ended in June2000, and that meant he had to return to teaching. Nonetheless, he published eight refereed co-authored articles with titles such as "Turbulent outflows from [WC]-type nuclei of planetary nebulae. I. BD +30d3639 and other [WC9-10] stars," "Wind inhomogeneities in Wolf-Rayet Stars. IV. Using clumps to probe the wind structure in the WC8 star HD 192103," "The puzzle of HD 104994 (=WR46),"and "Light curve solution of the earliest known star in a binary, HD 93205(03V + 08V)." He mentions another six non-refereed papers, participation in nine conferences, and travels to observatories in Chile , Australia , and Argentina . Moreover, he has just welcomed a German student to begin a Ph.D. in Astrophysics under his supervision.

Nimal RAJAPAKSE ((U of British Columbia) was appointed Chair of Elasticity Committee and Associate Editor of the Journal of Engineering Mechanics of the American Society of Civil Engineers. He was elected Fellow of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering, and he was awarded the Horst Leipholz Medal by the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering in recognition of outstanding contributions to engineering mechanics research. Congratulations!

James RETALLACK (U of Toronto) edited two books in the year 2000:Sachsen in Deutschland: Politik, Kultur undGesellschaft 1830-1918 and Saxonyin German History: Culture, Society, and Politics, 1830-1933. In addition, he published seven articles with titles such as "Deutsche Demagogie vor und nach dem Umbruch 1918/19," "Herrenmenschen und Demagogentum: Konservative und Antisemiten in Sachsen und Baden ," "Suffragereform, corporatist society, and the authoritarian state: Saxon transitionsin the 1860s," and "Demagogentum, Populismus, Volkstümlichkeit: Überlegungen zur 'Popularitätshascherei' auf dem politischen Massenmarkt des Kaiserreichs." He gavepapers in Ottawa , Toronto , Harvard , Berlin , and Birmingham . And, despite the fact that heis a professor in History, he is starting his third year of a three-yearterm as Head of the German department at U of T.

Bev ROBERTSON (Bushwakker Brewery -www.bushwakker.com) hosted an international brewing exchange student from the Weihenstephan Institute of the TU Munich in his brewery from August to October 2000. Quite a coup to get a Bavarian to come to Regina to learn the secrets of brewing!

Thomas SALUMETS (U of British Columbia) presented papers in San Francisco and Washington , and gave two radio interviews for Radio Free Europe. He continues as editor of the Journal of Baltic Studies, and has published a book chapter on "Escape artists and freedom's children."

Lawrence STOKES (formerly Dalhousie U, now retired) published two articles, "Canada and the German Resistance: The 1937 Canadian visit of Carl Friedrich Goerdeler," and "Der oldenburgische Landesteil Lübeck als 'Hochburg der Hitler-Bewegung' und 'Probebühne des Dritten Reiches' 1930-1934."

Petr VANICEK gave papers in Montreal , Banff , Calgary , and Tatranska Lomnica. He co-authored three articles with the following titles “Effect of topographical mass density variation on gravity and the geoid in the Canadian Rocky Mountains,” “On the accuracy of modified Stokes's integration in high-frequency gravimetric geoid determination: A comparison of two numerical techniques,” and “An alternative algorithm to FFT for the numerical evaluation of Stokes's integral.” And he is sole author of “The detection of crustal movements by geodetic space techniques. ”He is also pleased – and rightly so! – to mention that his name was included in Millennium as one of the twenty most successful Czechoslovak immigrants to Canada . Congratulations!

Wolfgang WALZ (U of Saskatchewan) was elected Head of Physiology for a five-year term. He continues to be funded by the CIHR and the Heart and Stroke Foundation. He is a project leader in the new Canadian Stroke Network for a six-member project on glial scar tissue on focal brain injury. And he published four research papers in the year 2000.

Gernot WIELAND (U of British Columbia) has co-edited the book Anglo-Latin and its Heritage: Essays in Honour of A.G. Rigg on his 64th Birthday, and has published the article "The hermeneutic style of Thiofrid of Echternach."