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Horst Ibelgaufts

This is me, Horst Ibelgaufts, the author of COPE. The pipe is actually a stone found at the beach, and it reminded me of Sherlock Holmes' 'three pipes problems'. How many pipes, one wonders, should be allotted to the problems of communication biology, cytokines, growth factors and all that. . Apart from that, the photograph makes me look much younger than I am. Not that it really matters, though.

Below you'll find some information about myself and my new life in a developing country - if you care to know in the first place. But then, I suppose, that is why you are on this page right now. You might also want to look at postcard and stampware and HELP REQUEST.

Bones only version (business executive summary, short and dry):

I studied biology, am a molecular biologist by training, and hold a master's degree and a Ph.D. I wrote several scientific and non-scientific books, did science and medical journalism for about 10 years, and numerous translations (English-German/German-English). I also did a lot of teaching and enjoyed this a lot. Some years ago I left a permanent position at the Gene Center of Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich, Germany, and now teach biochemistry, molecular biology, and cytokine biology to medical students in a third world country.
COPE is an independent project begun more than a decade ago. It is the continuously updated and enlarged electronic version of a highly successful Dictionary of Cytokines that is now out of print (see: COPE Reviews).

Flesh and bones version (not juicy, but long and more personal):

I studied biology at the University of Cologne, Germany. As a 3rd semester student I was lucky to be assigned to an independent little project aimed at isolating promoter mutations in bacterial operons. That seemed like the real scientist's life. It did not matter that one got paid for 20 hours but often worked 60 hours or more per week, weekends included. Those were still the glorious days of classical bacterial genetics at the end of an era (with cloning being round the corner). Working in the lab was not work. It was a lifestyle and a thrilling experience. I also acted as the Institute's curator of the strain collection, creating a punch-card system for easy retrieval of strains according to phenotype/genotype (mind you, no Macintosh or PC with databank programmes in those days). In 1974 I graduated at the Institute of Genetics with a master's degree thesis on the fine structure mapping and behaviour of insertion mutations in bacterial operons.

Part of my studies I financed by teaching biology at two different High Schools for several years. One school was normal, the other one was not (I don't want to use the term 'conservative', and the other terms I have in mind are not politically correct). I taught the lot: hopping frogs, nesting storks, migratory birds, hatching fish, leafy leaves, sprouting beans, and other greenery that would have made cows happy, as well as other things that usually turn off most pupils if the teachers are like what most school books were in those days - uninspiring and boring (which I most certainly wasn't).

Before I forget: human biology cost me the position at the not so progressive institution. They kicked me out after I enlarged 15 school book lines (yes, lines!) on human reproductive functions to 2 hours and explained to the 17- and 18-year old pupils more than all about the bees and the flowers and the spelling of the word 'contraceptives'. The reason given to me by the principal, Sister Ancilla, was "because of glorification of euthanasia". Being kicked out like this actually pre-empted handing in my own resignation - how could I tolerate that the 80+ year old principal had no problems with bigotry and insisted that So-and-so must not be marked F since she was So-and-so's niece (So-and-So being a prominent local politician in those days). So much for Christian values or the absence of it.

I should like to think that things have changed a bit since then, but sometimes I am not so sure at all, mostly because I live now in a frightfully "Christian" country in Asia, where I live again with all these Christian values - or mostly their absence - in a way as if, somehow, I have suddenly gone back more than 30 years in time.

In 1979, I received my Ph.D. degree with a neuro-oncological thesis on the molecular biological, histological, and immunological characterization of adenovirus-induced neuroectodermal tumours in rats. It won the second prize for contributions towards neuro-oncology at the first World Congress of the International Brain Research Organization (ahem) and for a short time I was thrilled about it, but it did not last long. This work was carried out at the Max Planck Institute of Brain Research, Cologne, under the benevolent (but still awesome and sometimes frightening) supervision of Professor Klaus Zülch (one of the brain tumor 'popes' in those days) and at the Institute of Genetics of Cologne University with Professor Walter Doerfler (one of the finest, trustworthy, inspiring, and understanding Ph.D. supervisors I have ever known). The initial phase of my Ph.D. studies was funded by a grant of the Max-Planck Society.

As a recipient of a fellowship of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, I spent my postdoctoral time at the Institute of Animal Genetics of Edinburgh University, studying the possible viral etiology of human brain tumours by in situ hybridization. In 1982 I joined Prof. Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker at the Department of Biochemistry of Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich (LMU), Germany, and later moved with him to the LMU Gene Center. He was unconventional and chaotic and created a very open-minded environment for scientists and teachers. I continued my studies on viruses and human brain tumors and also studied brain tumour oncogenes for several years. Then I quit the lab benches, ran biochemistry lab classes, and did what I had found out I liked best: lecturing on biochemistry, genetic engineering, and cytokine research.

I got quite engaged with knowledge engineering and consider the organization, consolidation, and presentation of information as an important branch of bioinformatics.

The older I get and the more I observe what happens in science, the more I get this depressing feeling of belonging to an endangered species of scientists, what with observing the slow death of basic and fundamental research, the demise of acquiring knowledge for its own sake as an intrinsic value, the strict utilitarianism being necessary to obtain research grant allotments, and the even broader utilitarianism of many students who seem to live on the principle that trying to get by with the least possible effort is also already too much of a bother.

I freelanced as science journalist for major German newspapers, magazines and the German press agency dpa, and as medical journalist for some German medical journals for many years during my study years. At the beginning this was exciting and challenging. Eventually I found it quite frustrating that scientific news in newspapers and magazines, in one way or other, were also not very different from other sellable items in shops and markets. For someone who reads a lot the expectation of "explain-the universe-in-less-than-20-lines" coinciding with attitudes like "now-I-know-everything" are quite disheartening and I disliked that then as much as I nowadays dislike these "Be-informed. Listen/view-our-1-minute-news-on-our-web-site" that seems to be all the rage with broadcasting and TV stations. I simply have a great distrust for people who base opinions and decisions on 1-minute views gleaned between breakfast, lunch, or supper and going to what I always new simply as the toilet but what has been transformed into a comfort room now and what is being referred to as the 'honorable handwash place' in Japan.

I also wrote several non-fiction books (including a 'Dictionary of Medicynical Terms that was plain fun to compile as a diversion from the harder stuff I usually deal with) under a pen-name (which I shall not disclose) and did numerous translations of biomedical articles, some patent applications, and some technical books (English-German-English). Much time I spent in the preparation of two scientific dictionaries (Genetic Enginering Dictionary in German, and a Dictionary of Cytokines in English, translated and updated from a previous German edition). Both were received very favourably but are out of print now.

One and a half year went by in close co-operation with a lawyer, compiling a rather voluminous legal commentary of the German Genetic Engineering Law. This was as much thrilling as it was sort of frightening, realizing what happens when the legal thumb comes down on science and almost breaks its backbones and more. Having no knowledge of law, I discovered that analysing legal documents is like performing a post-mortem on a text. One uses the tools of applied linguistics to squeeze out, with minutest attention to detail and a lot of what seems like hair splitting (but isn't), every little bit of meaning and its consequences. I actually enjoyed beating (innocent) words until they confessed (or should I refer to this now as Semantic Textome Analysis?). The lawyer cited my own dictionary definitions against me, which were never written, of course, with a view towards the legal profession. It was amusing to see the trained legal mind struggle with concepts such as a 'carrier of genetic information' and the 'transfer of genetic information'. It was less amusing to learn about the (rather severe) legal implications it would have had if the carrier could have been separated from its load. The ultimate 'killers' were DNA replication (a copying process but not like photocopying) and plasmid gene transfer (neither photocopying nor a simple transposition of item A from location 1 to location 2 with loss of item A at location 1, for which there would have been legal precedents). Discussions of whether naked DNA, plasmids and cloning vectors were 'organisms' in the sense of the law or not highlighted the chasms between legal and biological definitions and seemed like a joke - until the realization came that lawyers don't seem to make jokes.

In 2002, I left Europe to teach biochemistry at a medical school in a developing country in Asia. As my continuing work on COPE shows, I am still engaged in knowledge engineering and hope to be able to do so for quite some time.

Addendum (quite personal and most likely much too long):

Some observations made during the past couple of years living and working in a developing country can be found under Culture shock.

LAST MODIFIED: October 2009

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