Bamberg and the Humboldts

 No, not a rock band, but my past few days of hanging out with super-smart folks and the folks who fund them and me.  The Humboldt Foundation held a meeting for awardees, which involved lots of Franconian food (oh my), several amazing lectures, and meeting these folks.  It is held in Bamberg where the spirit of Humboldt apparently lives.  Let me explain.

Despite Humboldt being a dead rich guy, the foundation is not what he created with his will, but by the German government to foster engagement with foreign scientists after World War II.  It funds, among other things, foreign scholars to spend time in Germany working with German scholars.  This foundation is why I am spending three months in Berlin this year and three months next year. The range of scholarship that is funded is pretty breathtaking, as our meeting includes philosophers and classisists (classics scholars, whatever they are called) and physicists and engineers and material scientists and folks in between.  I have been to such a multidisciplinary event although it did remind me of a conference in 1990ish where Dave and I served as rapporteurs but that was mostly physicists and nuclear engineers and the like.  

The program here involved opening presentations about Bamberg and Humboldt, lectures on optical networks, philosophical rationality, climate change, and the human genome and mutation (now the X-men are on my mind).  We also had small group organized by discipline-ish.  My group of 20 covered the humanities and social sciences.  And we had some excellent meals that exemplified the food of this region (heavy, really heavy).  

I was my first real European rail trip since my college days (except for some trips between Amsterdam and the Hague), and, yowza, are the rails smooth here.  Great tank country.  Anyhow, I got here a bit early on the first day so I walked around the town.  Bamberg is, well, really old and mostly undamaged.  It was founded around 1070 as the home to Holy Roman emperor types, and it was not bombed in World War II, which makes for a really amazing old city.  It is famous for a specific kind of beer: smokey!

The first evening started with a bit of history about Humboldt.  He was one of two sons of a rich family, and he really, really wanted to explore and engage in some serious botany and other scientific investigations.  Which he did once his mother died.  He documented heaps of nature in Latin America and in Europe.  His scientific interests were all over the place, so naming this foundation after him makes a great deal of sense. Alex said once: "Knowledge and insight are the joy and entitlement of humankind."  Indeed.

The first section of the first morning was by Polina Bayvel of University College London on optical networks.  She did an excellent job of talking to folks who were a range of sharp hard physicists and curious social scientists--she made the optics of fiber and of the cloud and the internet most clear.  The history of philosophy and religion prof lost me.  

In the afternoon, our roundtable was partly aimed at introductions so that maybe folks might find some people to work with down the road. The person at the table closest to me was... a former colleague.  Vincent Pouloit, who was hired at McG in my sixth year or so there, is also here.  That was a fun surprise as neither of us knew we are Humboldting this year until we read the program for the event. The group talked a bit about a variety of issues affecting contemporary social science including AI in the classroom.

And then there was the award ceremony.  It was really touching to have every awardee introduced and given a certificate.  I will be most proud to frame it and put it on my office wall.  I felt very outclassed here as some of the folks here are making tremendous contributions to science, but I am, of course, quite proud to be among them.  

Vincent!!!

The meals, other than the heaviness of the food, have been the best part.  The first night our table happened to be me and a sociologist and three super enthusiastic physicists who so much loved talking about their stuff and using their hands like fighter pilots to explain their concepts.  Last night, as it was before the ceremony, there were some friends/guests of the Humbodlt Foundation at the dinner.  So, I sat next to a very inquisitive chemist who asked me about NATO and other stuff, and explained his work--zapping things with lasers including ... coffee!  

The first presentation of the second day was by Tiffany Shaw (a Canadian!) who talked about Predicting Climate Change.  It was a fascinating talk about some of the dynamics of climate change and where the uncertainty is.  Nope, no uncertainty about it being caused by humans and that it is getting worse.  One of the things I had not known is that the temperature change was essentially additive--that the temperatures are rising in a relatively linear fashion but the effect on precipitation is non-linear.  That means it is getting to get much, much wetter.  Oh my.  I asked a question about 2023 since she had it on her final slide but didn't talk about how last year was beyond the predictions or at least at the outer end of the range of predictions.  She suggested this year might actually not be quite as hot as there were some specific dynamics last year that were temporary that pushed things hotter than the general trends. She finished by saying how this was an exciting time to be doing this kind of work, which reminded me of how I left about doing the International Relations of Ethnic Conflict in the 1990s--exciting but scary and depressing.

 

The next presentation was about the genome and mutation.  The first big surprise is that most/all mutation is bad--making it more likely for someone to die.  And, well, that ran against all the years of X-Men and Homo Superior.  Magneto had the wrong idea about mutation?  It turns out that what we think about evolution is wrong--it is not really progressive and more by chance!  That mutations tend to be selected out in a large population (like yeast?!) but may remain in smaller populations like elephants these days or homonids way back when.   This nearly neutral model of evolution has really shook things up even as it has not made it out of the genome scholars and into the popular understanding.  

I didn't stick around for the q&a as I had to get to a pharmacy before it closed.  And then I explored more of Bamberg, going into various museums and super old buildings.

My quest for life-changing strudel continues, alas, without success. It was fine.

 

 

 We have one last dinner, and then tomorrow, I take the train back to Berlin to prepare for my next adventure: skiing in the Alps!  Hopefully, the wifi will be better in Zurs, but, of course, I will need it less as I will be out and about on many slopes and chair lifts!

Once again, I am thinking--better to be lucky than good.  This winter has been amazing--my time in Berlin and Vienna has been fantastic. I can now add my Bamberg adventure.  Just a terrific time, learning a lot, and enjoying the Humboldt Spirit™.