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User:Athel cb

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I am a biochemist (now retired) at the CNRS in Marseilles, formerly Birmingham (UK). I have an h-index of 66 (Google Scholar), and an Erdős number of 3, via Jorge Soto-Andrade and Winnie Li (a bit of a cheat, really, as I'm not a mathematician and barely understand the mathematics in the papers coauthored with Jorge Soto).

Main interests: Biochemistry, especially enzymes, metabolic regulation, self-organization, metabolic control analysis, definition of life, biochemical evolution; physical chemistry; history and philosophy of science; Chile, and Latin America in general.

On any page, on any topic, if I see a red link I try to find a way to make it blue.

Edits I've done, and pages I've created

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These are the pages I've created since I started on Wikipedia in June 2020:

Articles

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Robert Abeles
Daniel Atkinson
Waldo Cohn
Sidney Colowick
Direct linear plot
Zacharias Dische
Jan-Hendrik S. Hofmeyr
Bernard Horecker
Christian Jung
Hermann Niemeyer
Herbert M. Sauro
Alberto Sols
Tetranucleotide hypothesis
Tsou plot

Template

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Template:EnzExplorer

Disambiguation

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Dan Atkinson (disambiguation)
Christian Jung (disambiguation)
Gösta Pettersson (disambiguation)

Redirection pages

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Athelstan Cornish-Bowden (biochemist)Athel Cornish-Bowden[1]
Athelstan Hall Cornish-Bowden (land surveyor)Athelstan Cornish-Bowden[1]
Biochemical oscillationsBiological rhythm
Catalytic constantturnover number
Endo-1,4-β-xylanaseXylanase[2]
Enterobactin synthase2,3-dihydroxybenzoate—serine ligase[2]
Exo-alpha-sialidaseNeuraminidase[2]
Guluronate-specific alginate lyasePoly(alpha-L-guluronate) lyase[2]
Hanes plotHanes–Woolf plot
Harden–Young esterFructose 1,6-bisphosphate
Harden-Young esterFructose 1,6-bisphosphate
List of irregularly spelled places in the United Kingdom
List of irregularly spelt places in the United Kingdom[3]
List of people from MarseillesList of people from Marseille[4]
Mannuronate-specific alginate lyasePoly(beta-D-mannuronate) lyase[2]
Mikhail VolkenshteinMikhail Volkenstein[5]
Retinoid isomerohydrolaseAll-trans-retinyl-palmitate hydrolase[2]

Other pages

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These are other pages I've worked significantly on:


In addition to these I've made a huge number of minor edits to pages about small places in Chile (and a few more substantial edits, for example for El Quisco). That has become an obsession, and a bit pointless, as I doubt whether any readers of Wikipedia in English really care who represents Sierra Gorda in the Senate. However, if the information is there it should be correct.

Time line

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  • 11th June 2020. First registered. 0 edits.
  • 11th June 2021. First birthday. 2113 edits. 6 pages created (apart from redirection pages.)
  • 27th October 2021. Passed 5000 edits.
  • 11th June 2022. Second birthday. 7659 edits.
  • 31st July 2022. Passed 10000 edits (editing Stemod-13(17)-ene synthase, of all obscure pages).
  • 11th June 2023. Third birthday. 14 185 edits.
  • 26th June 2023. Passed 15000 edits (editing prunasin β-glucosidase).
  • 11th June 2024. Fourth birthday. 18 294 edits. 14 articles created (apart from redirection and disambiguation pages).

The places I've been

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Place of birth: UKDevon: Ashburton
Long enough to have a postal address: CanadaOntario: Guelph ChileSantiago FranceBouches du Rhône: Marseilles Singapore: Rimau (now View Road) UKBirminghamDevon: East Allington, Newton Abbot, TotnesCheshire: HaleOxfordshire: OxfordShrewsbury USACalifornia: Alameda, Berkeley
Days or weeks: Argentina: Buenos Aires, Pinamar Australia: Canberra, Perth Austria: Klosterneuburg, Vienna Belgium: Brussels, Louvain la Neuve Brazil: Blumenau, Foz de Iguazú China: Hanzhou, Nanjing, Pekin Colombia: Barranquilla, Bogotá, Santa Marta Czechia: Prague German Democratic Republic (East Germany): Berlin, Holzhau, Leipzig Germany: Berlin, Magdeburg, Prien, Rüdesheim am Rhein Greece: Athens, Mount Athos, Mykonos, Rhodes ... Hungary: Badacsony, Budapest, Debrecen, Szeged, Visegrád India Ireland Israel Italy: Bolzano, Siena, Venice... Japan: Kyoto, Tokyo, Tsuruoka Latvia: Riga Mexico: Ciudad de México, Cuernavaca The Netherlands: Amersfoort, Amsterdam, Nijmegen, Noordwijkerhout, The Hague, Utrecht Norway: Tromsø Poland Portugal: Aveiro, Braga, Coimbra, Funchal, Lisbon, Oeiras, Portimão, Porto Rumania: Bucharest Russia: Moscow, St Petersburg South Africa: Johannesburg, Knysna, Stellenbosch Spain: many Switzerland: Basle, Zurich... Sweden: Gothenberg, Gräsö, Lund, Stockholm, Uppsala Turkey: Ankara, Antalya, Bursa, Edremit, Ephesis, Istanbul, Konya, Ürgüp Uruguay: Montevideo
Less than two days: Andorra Belarus: Minsk Bulgaria: Sofia Croatia: Zagreb Cyprus: Famagusta Denmark: nowhere special Egypt Luxemburg Malaysia: Johore Monaco North Macedonia: Skopje Paraguay: International Zone, Itaipu Serbia: Belgrade Slovenia: Ljubljana Sri Lanka: Colombo
Airports only: Peru: Lima Puerto Rico: San Juan United Arab Emirates: Sharja Iceland: Reykavik Indonesia: Djakarta
Places I've lectured: Argentina: Buenos Aires, Pinamar Australia: Canberra, Perth Austria: Klosterneuburg, Vienna Belgium: Brussels, Louvain la Neuve Brazil: Blumenau CanadaOntario: Guelph, Ottawa, TorontoAlberta: Calgary, EdmontonQuébec: Montreal Chile: Concepción, La Serena, Pucón, Santiago, Talca, Valdivia, Valparaíso China: Nanjing, Pekin, Shanghai Colombia: Barranquilla, Santa Marta German Democratic Republic (East Germany): Berlin, Holzhau, Leipzig Germany: Berlin, Bielefeld, Heidelberg, Magdeburg, Prien, Rüdesheim am Rhein, Stuttgart Hungary: Badacsony, Budapest, Debrecen, Szeged, Visegrád Singapore: Nan Yang France: Aix, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Montpellier, Paris, Sophia Antipolis India: Bangalore Ireland: Dublin Israel: Beer Sheva, Rehovot Italy: Bolzano, Il Ciocco Japan: Kyoto, Tokyo, Tsuruoka Latvia: Riga Mexico: Ciudad de México The Netherlands: Nijmegen, Noordwijkerhout Portugal: Lisbon, Oeiras Rumania: Bucharest South Africa: Cape Town, Johannesburg, Stellenbosch Spain: Barcelona, El Escorial, Granada, La Laguna, Madrid, Valencia Switzerland: Basle Sweden: Lund, Stockholm, Uppsala Turkey: Istanbul UKEngland: manyScotland: Dundee, Edinburgh, St Andrews USACalifornia: Berkeley, Bodega Bay, Davis, OxnardIllinois: ChicagoMassachusetts: Amherst, CambridgeMichigan: Detroit, East LansingMinnesota: MinneapolisMontana: BigforkNew York: IthacaNorth Carolina: Durham, Research Δ ParkOhio: Cleveland, ColumbusUtah: Ogden Uruguay: Montevideo

Who am I in real life?

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Photo in school uniform taken in about 1953. I may have changed a bit since then.

My real name is Athel Cornish-Bowden. Anyone who knows me in real life will have easily guessed that from the way I sign, but it's not so obvious for others. When I first registered for Wikipedia I signed like that, but when I realized that most people didn't I changed to what you see now. The A in my given name is pronounced like the a in "hat" [æ]; most people say it like that, but I've heard it with the a of "hate" [ɛɪ̯]. "Cornish" is pronounced as you'd expect. The "Bow" in "Bowden" can be pronounced like "bow" or like "bow", whichever you prefer. That sounds a bit obscure, so I rephrase: it can be pronounced like "beau" or like "bough", whichever you prefer: [bəʊ̯] or [baʊ̯]. The name is common in the southwest, Devon in particular, where it is pronounced ['baʊ̯dən] ("bough dən"). My great-grandfather William Bowden was from Devon and pronounced it accordingly. However, my great-grandmother thought that sounded "common" and insisted that he change it to ['bəʊ̯dən] ("beau dən"), and that's how most of us say it today. The name is also common in Greater Manchester (with nothing much in between, so it probably arose independently in two places), where it is pronounced ['bəʊ̯dən] or ['bo:dən].

People with Wikipedia pages that I have met

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I saw a section entitled "People with Wikipedia articles that I've met" on another user's page, and I thought, that's interesting, I wonder how many I have. I haven't included people who are still alive, but only people who can't come back and say they have no idea who I am. I also don't include people that I met very casually in circumstances where they wouldn't remember me afterwards, such as the Nobel Prizewinner whose car I helped to push when it broke down in Oxford, or another Nobel Prizewinner that I exchanged a few words with when we found ourselves next to one another at the urinals at a meeting at Harvard.

The composer Christopher Willis is my nephew. However, it doesn't say so either in his Wikipedia article or in mine, because I don't know of a source that would be acceptable as verification.

  1. ^ a b Needed for "distinguish" tab
  2. ^ a b c d e f From EC Accepted Name to title of article (only done when it isn't obvious)
  3. ^ This is to counteract a particularly silly inconsistency on another page
  4. ^ The English spelling is used less and less, but people may still search for it.
  5. ^ Previously Mikhail Volkenstein redirected to Mikhail Volkenshtein. Now it's the other way round, to conform to how he wrote his name himself in publications in English.
  6. ^ The dreadful state it was in before June 2020 (omitting most of the great names who created biochemistry, such as Otto Warburg, Luis Leloir, William Jencks, Daniel Koshland, Fritz Lipmann and more than 50 others, and including a lot of junk — fraudsters, people famous for being wrong, the father of an actress, the successful author of science fiction and popularizer of science, etc.) provided much of the impetus to convince me to become a Wikipedia editor
  7. ^ The state it was in before June 2021 was not nearly as dreadful as the List of biochemists before June 2020, but it had quite a lot of dross (crackpots, people famous for being wrong) and major figures like Peter Mitchell omitted.
  8. ^ Another one that was in a very unsatisfactory state. Unfortunately there are so many of these.