My Dissertation

So, because science seems to be all about bashing each other anymore, especially when politicians are involved, everyone wants to look at my dissertation, as if the quality of my dissertation had anything to do with zu Guttenberg's or Koch-Mehrin's dissertations.

I'm so honored.

I think that maybe 5 people in the world besides my two honorable advisors ever read the thing, I have maybe 95 copies in a box in the attic, I'll be glad to sell them for 5 € plus postage, just drop me an email!

My thesis is called "Contributions to Mechanical Proofs of Correctness for Compiler Front-Ends" and it is in theoretical computing. It has been online since about 1997. Yes, I've been online since 1991, I recently found an ancient posting. The Internet never forgets.

Since the thesis was printed using PostScript, your browser may not be able to understand what it needs to do in order to read it. I've fired up Acrobat and produced a version in PDF for the general public.

I've also added the following to the page:

I wish to publicly thank my mentors, Prof. Dr. Hans Langmaack (Kiel) and Prof. Dr. Robert S. Boyer (Austin, TX), for teaching me what science is about. Langmaack taught me to doubt everything I write, to rip the arguments of others apart, looking for the holes. But most importantly they both taught me that we only rip the science, not the person. We go have a beer together, after demolishing the proof. And maybe over that beer we will finally see how the proof needs to be conducted, if my theorem is, indeed, correct.

My dissertation is dedicated to the memory of Kerstin Maaß, my best friend, killed by a drunk driver the day I finished typesetting my manuscript.

And now, could we please get back to focusing on the topic of how to avoid plagiarism and make science more honest? Thank you.