Interview with Mark Perakh

Ed already highlighted it, but I wanted to draw more attention to this interview with Panda's Thumb contributor and author of the book "Unintelligent Design," Mark Perakh. Mark's life story is simply incredible (Siberian prison camps, teaching in several countries, and much more), but what was the neatest connection for me ('cause it was new to me) was this:

From 1973 to 1978, Perakh taught as a professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, performing research in photodeposition of semiconductor films and electrodeposition.

Why is this interesting? My first actual research position--the summer after my freshman year in college, when I was still leaning toward chemistry as a major--was in the R&D sector at a semiconductor company. I still have the research summary--"Evaluation of plasma versus atmospheric CVD [chemical vapor deposition] borophosphosilicate glass." Turns out Mark even coined the term "photodeposition," and was one of the early developers of the technique. I'll be damned if I can remember much about all of it now, but it was a great internship. Bet Mark would have been more fun to work for, though--my boss, unfortunately, was a rather stereotypical Englishman (bad teeth and reeked of cigarettes).