I was born on August 3, 1953 in Bremen in northern Germany. My parents come from the former eastern parts of Germany that are now Poland. I have two younger brothers who are not interested in mathematics. But they are talented otherwise (just in case they read this). My grades in school (except sports and music) were quite good. I won some books for it. As a 16 years old high school student in Singen (Hohentwiel) I became seriously involved with mathematics. My friend Joachim Michel talked me into it. He is now a math professor in LeHavre, France. We just met at the Field museum in Chicago admiring dinosaurs this summer (1999.)

In 1972 I began studying mathematics in Konstanz. I lived close to the beautiful Lake of Constance near the island of Mainau. I liked the courses of Prof. F. W. Schaefke in several areas of analysis. Of course, the other courses were great, too (just in case one of my former teachers reads this). My diploma thesis (1977) was on the growth rate of convergence radii of the eigenvalues of the Mathieu equation. I solved the problem in 1995 but this came a little too late. My dissertation (1979) under the supervision of Prof. Schaefke was on integral relations with variable limits for special functions of mathematical physics.

In 1978 I began my professional career as an assistant of Prof. Dieter Schmidt at the University of Essen. An assistant has a temporary position like an assistant professor in the U.S., however, the tenure-track part is missing. I lived close to the idyllic Lake Baldeney. I wrote the papers [1]-[15] listed in my publication list. In 1987 I acquired my habilitation with my book (that gives me the right to apply for a position as a professor.)

We all know how difficult the job situation is for professors these days. Thus I was quite happy when in 1990 I became an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee. I live close to Lake Michigan (the greatest lake so far.) I was promoted to associate professor in 1993 and to full professor in 1997.

I had three Ph.D. students: Ralph Svetic, Lukemba Liamba and Xionghui He. Ralph worked 20 years as an engineer before he finally succumbed to the temptation of an academic career. He is now a postdoc at Michigan Sate University. The other two have not finished yet.

Other than mathematics I like computer stuff (over the years: Pascal, Assembler, LaTeX, C, C++, Maple, WWW, Java, Perl) but also Roman history, literature and baseball. My time playing chess in teams and on tournaments is long over.