About me

I saw the light of day on July, the 19th, 1970 in Ulm. After spending way too much time in school with non-mathematical (and thus for me rather boring) things like latin, geography and the like I studied mathematics and philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz and finished with a master thesis about bitstream encryption and cryptographically secure pseudo random number generators.

In 2006 I started writing my Ph.D. thesis under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Gudrun Wolfschmidt at the University of Hamburg. I completed my Ph.D. thesis about analog computing early in 2009 and had my disputation on July, 9th, 2009, so I can now call myself Dr. rer. nat. Bernd Ulmann. :-) (My Ph.D. thesis has been published by Oldenbourg Publishing in April 2010 with the title "Analogrechner: Wunderwerke der Technik - Grundlagen, Geschichte und Anwendung" and can be ordered at Amazon.)

As you might have guessed already, I am fascinated by automatic computation - an obsession that started when I got my first computer, a ZX81 with a 16 kB memory expansion module as a birthday present when I turned 11. Since then I spend most of my time thinking and dreaming (being a mathematician :-) ) about computers, analog and digital.

Over the years this obsession led to a rather large collection of old computers - in the digital domain I prefer machines built by DEC (cf. http://www.vaxman.de), in the analog domain I prefer machines built by Telefunken and EAI.

The picture on the left was taken in September 2009 by my beloved wife, Rikka, during a visit to Peenemünde where not only the A4 rocket was created. More important for me is that this is also the place of birth of the world's first fully electronic analog computer, conceived and built by Helmut Hoelzer.

In August 2009 I was appointed as a lecturer for business commercial information technology at the "Fachhochschule für Oekonomie und Management" (FOM for short) in Frankfurt/Main. Since April 15th, 2010, I can call myself "Professor". :-)

In my spare time I do my best to save old computers from scrap (with the invaluable help of Rikka) and restore and repair them. If you happen to know of an (not necessarily electronic) analog computer which needs a good new home, please let me know (we - Rikka and I - are not afraid even of large machines weighing in excess of a ton :-) ). I will do my best to save the machine.

More information about me can be found in my curriculum vitae (available in German only).

Contact information:

Prof. Dr. Bernd Ulmann
Schwalbacher Strasse 31
65307 Bad Schwalbach/Hettenhain
ulmann(at)analogmuseum.org
        

22-DEC-2009