Happy Birthday Carl Kuntze and Alan Turing!

Our birthday wishes today go out to:

Carl Kuntze (1843 – 1907) and Alan Turing (1912 – 1954).

Carl Kuntze was a renegade botanist. In the true spirit of a fanatic he collected thousands of plants and developed a new taxonomy system all by himself. Obviously, his ideas were widely rejected at first. We celebrate his birthday, because he named today’s most popular tea plant: “Camellia sinensis”. The plant was first (1753) called “thea sinensis” by Carl von Linné until Kuntze detected its link to the camellia family. This is important to us, as we love tea ourselves! Here is a picture from our trip to Darjeeling in 2008. Thanks Carl!

We are confident that Alain Turing does not need an introduction. One of the greatest cryptoanalysts and computer scientists, Time Magazine ranked him among the 100 greatest minds of the last century. Think of him when you use a computer today!

Wilhelm von Humboldt's b-day!

We are also celebrating (Friedrich) Wilhelm von Humboldt’s birthday today. He was born 1767 in Potsdam and turns 243 years today. Not an even number but you cannot celebrate the Humboldt brothers enough! He was appointed to council to the king (germ: Geheimrat) and became the Prussian Minister of Education in January 1809. He was the initiator of the foundation of the “Berliner University” (today Humboldt-University) in 1910 which today is Humboldt-University zu Berlin, Germany’s oldest and largest school of higher education.

Konrad Zuse

Our office is celebrating Konrad Zuse today. Not only did he invent the modern (binary) computer but he lived also in our neighborhood: Methfesselstreet 7, 10965 Kreuzberg/Berlin. Unfortunately, the building was destroyed during WW 2, but we can recommend a walk and a beer at close by Bergmannstreet, one of the nicest areas in the city center.

Congrats to Deutsche Boerse!

We want to congratulate Deutsche Boerse on its new page on Indices. This is really useful! Thank you, folks!

in partechular: 3 questions

1) Thomas, why partechular blog?

We are aware that there is a myriad of homepages, blogs and other information on the internet focusing on technology related subjects. With partechular, we aim to interest our readers in industries that have tremendous potential but are not generally in the focus of the popular eye, e.g. clinical research services, surface and material technologies or hybrid crops. However, financial markets will not be our only focus here. As you can see from our corporate website we are supported by a number of scientists active in fields like geophysics, medical technology, molecular biology or nanotechnology. We believe that by combining financial expertise and research know-how we can offer unique insights and perspectives that should be both interesting and surprising to our readers.

From a content point of view we plan to present current affairs (e.g. corporate transactions, annual results, and industry analysis or trade fair updates) in a timely and readable way. While we will offer our opinions, we will base them thoroughly on publicly available facts, background checks and interviews with industry professionals.

2) Who is the target group?

We write this blog motivated by our own interest and as a means of self-discipline. However, we also write this for genuinely curious people who are uncomfortable with easy answers. We imagine our readers to be interested in business and economics as well as science and technology. Though not necessary, a healthy interest in and a generally good sense of math might be helpful.

3) What do you plan to get out for yourself with this blog?

We will monitor and write about companies (either private or listed) and industry trends that we find interesting. We hope that our analyses and opinions will excite or even provoke our readers’ thoughts. By this we hope to initiate public debates on the respective subjects. We believe that this is ultimately the only way to improve and learn.
We ask our readers to participate actively. However, we are acutely aware that the Internet offers a weak platform for social interaction. We therefore ask our readers to employ basic netiquette rules.