User:Dr.Zeiger~enwiki

Dr. Bernd Zeiger born 5 June 1941 in Germany. He has its PhD in theoretical chemistry from Frankfurt University.

Now he is retired and likes to share some of his experiences and understandings with others in the hope it is of use to them.

He also is a practitioner of Yoga and Transcendentel Meditation, a systematic way for probing deep into the nature of consciousness where all theories come from.

If time and circumstances allow he will add to Wikipedia some articles on theoretical chemistry about more recent but well established developments as for example the biography of important theoreticists like Hermann Hartmann and Hans Primas  as well as topics which have not yet been dealt with, especially those which are related to supersymmetric quantum chemistry.

It is a rule of the thumb that the presentation of a subject in university lectures and text books lags behind about 25 years with respect to the actual forefront of understanding in that field.

Recently an explanation for this time lag in the assimilation of new discoveries has been found, which relates to the situation in Germany, but may be valid also in other parts of the world with a similar university system. In an article by Sigrid D. Peyerimhoff entiteled: "The Development of Computational Chemistry in Germany"  available in excerpts at http://www.quantum-chemistry-history.com/Pey_ff_Dat/CompGerm/Pey_ff_CompGerm.htm

She writes: “Fast expansion of the German university system in the 1970s had brought a considerable number of new positions in theoretical and computational chemistry to universities. However, this positive side was turned around in the following 20 years. Financial restrictions lead to a decrease in budgets, and salary lines of postdoctoral positions at universities were often simply cut off. Since many of the professors, who came into office toward the end of the 1970s, were quite young, there was essentially no university post open for young people until the mid 1990s when retirement of this first generation of professors started. In other words, the generation of young scientists who were all well trained in the field could not really use their talents for research at German universities or research centers. Many of those people went into (computer-oriented) industry or took their talents to other countries.”

Looking back, this is in fact the short biography of Dr. Zeiger.