Misplaced Pages

Gerd Sommerhoff

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Bon courage (talk | contribs) at 18:52, 30 December 2022 (Restored revision 1130458614 by Bon courage (talk): RV. not at all appropriate). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 18:52, 30 December 2022 by Bon courage (talk | contribs) (Restored revision 1130458614 by Bon courage (talk): RV. not at all appropriate)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

Gerd Walter Christian Sommerhoff OBE (for services to education) was born on 13th February 1915, in Wiesbaden, Germany and died on 28th April 2002, in Cambridge, England, United Kingdom. He was a pioneer & lifelong advancer of theoretical neuroscience and a noted humanist.

A great-grandson of the German composers Robert Schumann and his wife Clara, he was living in England at the outset of the Second World War. Being a foreign national, he blamelessly suffered more than two years in an internment camp in Canada before decompressing back in England, where he took up a post teaching science at the Dragon School in Oxford. While there, he laid the foundation for Educational Technology (for which he was honoured by our late queen) using boxes of numbered cards, containing questions, answers, tutorial material, or descriptions of experiments, on a variety of different subjects. He became a Research Fellow in Systems Theory at University College London, and presented science programmes for the BBC from 1960 to 1962, before being recruited to teach technology in Sevenoaks School in 1963 by headmaster Kim Taylor.

Some of his students were Tim Hunt, Alan Macfarlane, John Paul Morrison,

Early life and family

Gerd Sommerhoff and his twin sister were born in Wiesbaden, Germany, to Elizabeth Ruher and Walter Georg Sommerhoff, a wealthy banker who was born in New York to Elise Schumann, the second child of Robert and Clara Schumann. The Sommerhoff family resided in Haarlem, Netherlands, until the loss of the family fortune in the Wall Street crash and the death of their father "in compromising circumstances". The two younger children moved to Ryde on the Isle of Wight in 1931 with their mother Elizabeth Sommerhoff when she married Major Bernard Francis Anne Vernon-Harcourt, while their elder brother, Walter Hans Sommerhoff, emigrated to Santiago, Chile.

Gerd Sommerhoff studied engineering at Zurich Polytechnic (now ETH Zurich) and philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University. Although Gerda Sommerhoff was exempted from internment as an enemy alien in 1939, Gerd Sommerhoff was interned in Canada until 1942. Gerda Sommerhoff, a model for Vogue magazine, sculptor and photographer, emigrated to Santiago, Chile, where she married Juan Eduardo Subercaseaux and had five children. Upon release from internment, Gerd Sommerhoff taught science at the Dragon School and presented science programmes for the BBC from 1960–1962 before being recruited to Sevenoaks School in 1963 by headmaster Kim Taylor.

Child sexual abuse

Alice Hemmings reported allegations of sexual abuse dating from 1976 in The Sevenoaks Chronicle. The assault was reported to the Kent Police force by Stuart Neilson in 2012. Gerd Sommerhoff was also alleged to have displayed pornography to pupils and to have made obscene remarks including boasts of bestiality. Sevenoaks School agreed to settle a compensation claim by another pupil alleging sexual abuse by Gerd Sommerhoff at Sevenoaks School when he was 12 years old. According to the plaintiff's lawyer, Tracey Emmett, "Sommerhoff’s abuse may have been suspected by those who worked with him." Several further witnesses and victims have subsequently been identified, indicating that Gerd Sommerhoff was a preferential paedophile attracted to pubescent boys.

Works

  • 1950: Analytical Biology
  • 1974: Logic of the Living Brain
  • 1990: Life, Brain and Consciousness
  • 1994: An Account of consciousness in physical and functional terms: A target for research in the neurosciences. Integrative Physiology and Behavioral Science. With Karl F. MacDorman.
  • 2001: Understanding Consciousness – its function and brain processes.

References

  1. Richard Brown Baker family papers
  2. Intellectual Autobiography by Richard Sorabji. In Metaphysics, Soul, and Ethics in Ancient Thought: Themes from the Work of Richard Sorabji, By Ricardo Salles. Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0-19-926130-7.
  3. J. Paul Morrison's autobiography. Accessed 16 June 2009.
  4. Brian Scragg, Sevenoaks School, A History (1993)
  5. Autobiography of Nobel Prizewinner Tim Hunt
  6. J. Paul Morrison's autobiography. Accessed 7 July 2016.
  7. Gerd Sommerhoff, Obituary, The Times, Friday 17 May 2002
  8. Brian Scragg, Sevenoaks School, A History (1993)
  9. Hemmings, Alice (8 November 2012). "Dead Sevenoaks teacher Gerd Sommerhoff accused of sexual abuse". Sevenoaks Chronicle. Retrieved 8 November 2012.
  10. Doran, Sean-Paul (7 November 2013). "Sevenoaks School settles sex abuse case out of court". Sevenoaks Chronicle. Retrieved 7 November 2013.
  11. Doran, Sean-Paul (18 November 2013). "Sevenoaks School teacher had 'six more victims' of sex abuse, claims accuser". Sevenoaks Chronicle. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
  12. Sommerhoff, Gerd; MacDorman, Karl (1994). "An account of consciousness in physical and functional terms: A target for research in the neurosciences". Integrative Physiological and Behavioral Science. 29 (2): 151–181. doi:10.1007/BF02691012. PMID 7947330. S2CID 17193883.
  13. Sage Publishers

Further reading

Categories: