The Author

A Short Curriculum Vitae

Peter A. Rinck
University Professor of Medical Imaging
Doctorate in History of Medicine (Medical Climatology)

Academic Résumé

Classical school education. Medical school (Free Uni­ver­si­ty of Berlin). Early exposure to radiology in Switzerland; residency residency in ra­dio­logy, nuc­lear medicine and radiation therapy at Char­lot­ten­burg Uni­ver­si­ty Hospital in Berlin. Further training in nuclear medicine at Loyola University Medical Cen­ter, Chicago. Senior Research Associate, State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York at Stony Brook (Research group of Paul C. Lauterbur; Nobel Prize in Medicine 2003). Subsequently physician-in-charge at the NMR research group at Deutsche Klinik für Diagnostik, Wies­baden, Ger­many, and resident in radiology at Wies­baden General Hospital. Lecturer at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mainz, Germany.

1986-2014 Adjunct and Visiting Professor at the School of Medicine and Pharmacy of the University of Mons-Hainaut in Belgium. Since 1987 University Professor of Radiology; 1987-1994 Head of the Mag­ne­tic Re­so­nance Cen­ter at the University of Trond­heim, Norway (at that time Europe's biggest clinical and research MR facility). Since 2008 President of the Council, The Round Table Foundation (TRTF).

Visiting Professorships: The Neurological Institute of Colombia. Bogotá, Colombia (1986); Cha­ri­té Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tal, Me­di­cal Faculty of Hum­boldt Uni­ver­si­ty, Ber­lin, Germany (1991-1992); et al.

Since 1982 Chair­man of the European Mag­ne­tic Re­so­nan­ce Fo­rum (EMRF); president of the Euro­pean So­cie­ty for Mag­ne­tic Re­so­nance in Me­di­cine and Bio­logy, 1985-1987; president of the annual meetings 1989, 2002. Chairman of the Selection Committee of the European Magnetic Resonance Award and, since 2012, Chairman of the Exe­cu­ti­ve Board of the Pro Academia Prize. For many years sci­en­ti­fic con­sul­tant and ex­pert ad­viser to in­ter­na­tional companies, organizations, and foundations (among them World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion, Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, UN In­dust­rial De­ve­lop­ment Or­ga­ni­za­tion, the No­bel Com­mit­tee).

Honorary, founding, or or­di­na­ry mem­ber of nu­me­rous pro­fes­si­onal and learned so­cie­ties. Among others, awards and prizes from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Max Kade Foundation, North At­lan­tic Treaty Or­ga­ni­za­tion, European Commission, Fonds na­tio­nal de la re­cher­che scien­ti­fi­que en Belgique, the Research Council of Norway, Deut­sche For­schungs­gemein­schaft.

Author and/or editor of several books — not only scien­ti­fic or me­di­cal — an e-learning website in se­ve­ral lan­gua­ges, nu­me­rous papers in refereed jour­nals (including fundamental research papers on the development of magnetic resonance imaging and AI for medical imaging) and com­mu­ni­ca­tions to in­ter­na­tio­nal scien­ti­fic and academic meetings; since 1990 Rinckside (learned columns) — and a great num­ber of contributions to the culture (feuilleton) sections of lead­ing Ger­man news­papers.

There is, of course, far more to a life — beyond the "et al." … but not in this short résumé.

Some Short Remarks on these Columns

For more than thirty years Rinck­side col­umns have ap­pear­ed a number of times per year. Ori­gi­nal­ly they were pub­lish­ed in a print­ed ver­sion only — over the years by se­ve­ral jour­nals, then both print­ed and on the web.

Rinck is my name, and a rink is an area in which a com­bat or con­test takes place, rinkside means “by the rink”; in a double meaning “Rinckside” means the page by Rinck. Sometimes I could also imagine “Rinck­sighs”, “Rinck­sights”, or “Rinck­sites”.

Meanwhile Rinck­side is part of The Round Table Foundation (TRTF) and has widened its scope by opening a multilingual daughter site, A Small Café, a site meant to be a plea­sant and inspiring small virtual academic meeting place on li­te­ra­ture, phi­lo­sophy, cri­ti­­cism, chron­icles, discourse and debate and open to a wide range of authors.

At the time when I began writing these essays I was deeply immersed in scientific and medical research. Authoring these columns was something completely different — unlike recording scientific results for learned journals, such a column allowed com­ment­ing on results and developments, in radiology, medicine, science, politics — and daily life. After many years in these fields, in different countries and con­ti­nents — Germany, Switzerland, the U.S.A., Belgium, Norway, France, and South America — in different positions, at all kinds of hospitals, uni­ver­si­ties and other institutions I had the opportunity to write about medical imaging and neighboring sub­jects from different angles.

These columns are not research articles in the sense of scholarly treatises but “sci­en­ti­fi­cally” opi­nio­nated papers on a wide range of topics. They are writ­ten based on my own experience, extensive research, and many of them have input from others — who either do not dare or do not want to voice themselves their observations or comments in public.

It is a unique and independent platform to stress points Europe-wide — and beyond. The reader may not agree with the contents of the articles — sometimes even I do not agree with them. But the aim is to provoke discussion and change for the better, and in this the articles have been successful.

Some Special Supplements were included during the last years. They were published elsewhere in media being part of TRTF and they fit nicely into the men­tal scheme of Rinck­side.

If you want to comment or contact me, please feel free to write to this e-mail address.

Yours truly,

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