Mario Markus (physicist)

Mario Markus at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Physiology in Dortmund

Mario Markus (born July 29, 1944 in Santiago de Chile ) is a German-Chilean physicist who did research at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Physiology in Dortmund for a long time . In addition to his scientific work, Markus has exhibited his own computer graphics, wrote volumes of poetry and novels, and translated and recited poetry. In numerous encounters with the media, he campaigned for his main concern, bridging the “two cultures” of natural science and art.

Life

Markus was born in Chile to German parents . He attended the "Liceo Manuel de Salas" in Santiago; he spent the school year 1961/1962 as an exchange student at the AFS in the USA. In early 1963 he passed his Abitur in Chile. From 1963 to 1965 he first studied mathematics, biology, chemistry and physics at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago and in 1965 switched to studying physics and mathematics at the University of Heidelberg , where he studied with Nobel Prize winner Hans Jensen .

In 1970 he obtained his physics diploma with a thesis on the pinch effect in plasmas from electrons and holes in semiconductors under Konrad Tamm at the Institute for Applied Physics at Heidelberg University. From March 1970 to 1973 he carried out research on instabilities in plasmas at this institute for his doctorate. At the beginning of 1973 he received his doctorate. rer. nat. After working as an assistant at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Heidelberg, he moved from April 1974 to the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics in Frankfurt am Main. Since January 1975 he has been a research assistant at the then Max Planck Institute for Nutritional Physiology (today's MPI for Molecular Physiology ) in Dortmund in the department of the biochemist and biophysicist Benno Hess . In 1988 he completed his habilitation at the University of Dortmund, where he was initially appointed as a private lecturer and in August 1997 as an adjunct professor.

Since 1993 he has headed his own working group at the MPI for Molecular Physiology. In 2004 he was elected Corresponding Member of the Chilean Academy of Sciences (Academia Chilena de Ciencias). Markus has published around 160 original scientific papers mainly on questions of self-organization and chaos in biology, physics and chemistry.

In addition to his scientific work, he has published several volumes of poetry, a novel, a comic and works on computer graphics.

Works and exhibitions with computer graphics

Since the 1980s, Markus has organized and created numerous works and exhibitions with computer graphics, which were created through a novel representation of Lyapunov exponents ( Lyapunov diagrams or fractals or Markus-Lyapunov fractals). The graphics were exhibited at the following locations, among others:

• DESY , Hamburg (1988)
• Goethe Institutes in Chile (Santiago, Valparaíso, 1988) and Portugal (Lisbon, Porto, 1992)
• University Gallery (Houston, Texas, 1989)
• Charité (Berlin, 1990)
• "Pop Maths Road Show" in Great Britain (Leeds, Cardiff, Bristol, Plymouth, Bedford, Jodrell Bank, London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Liverpool, Sheffield, Cambridge, Stockport, Birmingham, 1989–1990)

In 2009 he published an extensive book (with a CD-ROM for the reader to create such graphics) on this subject. The book "The Art of Mathematics" has also been published in Spanish and English.

Simulation of hallucinations / the "light at the end of the tunnel"

Simulation of a hallucination that can occur when there is a lack of oxygen.

In 1994 Markus published a computational simulation of hallucinations that occur, among other things, when there is a lack of oxygen in the retina, and which are similar to the "light at the end of the tunnel", which is partly described in near-death experiences. Markus writes:

The concentric circles, the spirals and the tunnels, as they were mathematically obtained here, are undoubtedly archetypal structures, as can be seen from the following list: (...) 6. The well-known interviews that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross conducted with people who were close to clinical death. Some of these people had even been pronounced dead. She wrote several books about it. The visions of tunnel with a light at its end, which are described in these books and which are very similar to the present computer simulations, were interpreted as 'evidence' for a way into the 'beyond'. One of the arguments for this claim is that these visions are independent of the cultural or religious context of the 'seers' so that they give the impression of the 'absolute'. In contrast, the results of the present work show that what all 'seers' have in common is not in the 'beyond', but in the physiology of their brains.

- Mario Markus : in "Hallucinations: their development in the cerebral cortex can be simulated on the computer"

Main scientific findings with references

• First evidence of a chaotic biological clock
• Development of a cellular machine for the rapid calculation of waves in excitable media, e.g. B. in the heart muscle and in other structures
• First evidence of turbulence in a chemical reaction
• Universal cellular machine for calculating patterns on mussels and snails
• Method for erasing turbulence in excitable media (e.g. in the heart muscle) by wave-splitting excitation pulses
• Simple experimental proof of double diffusive convection. This phenomenon prevents the use of drinking water from dragged icebergs
• Modeling the periodic return of cicadas after a prime number of years
• Method for the complete separation of different sized particles by shaking

Prices

• Best exhibition of 1988 (“Estética en las Ciencias”), awarded by the Chilean Association of Art Critics.
• Sponsorship award from the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the publication of the bilingual audio book “Poesía Chilena” (Sello Alerce, Chile, 2005).

Books

• Poemas de Invierno. Betania, Madrid 1990, ISBN 84-86662-60-5 .
• Bilis Negra. (Comic) JC Sáez, Santiago de Chile 2006, ISBN 956-306-011-3 .
• Charts for Prediction and Chance. Imperial College Press, London 2007, ISBN 978-1-86094-835-0 .
• Punzadas. LOM ediciones, Santiago de Chile 2007, ISBN 978-956-282-924-3 .
• Una fórmula = Una image. LOM Ediciones, Chile 2009, ISBN 978-956-00-0082-8 .
• The art of math. Verlag Zweausendeins, Frankfurt 2009, ISBN 978-3-86150-767-3 .
• Poesía Latinoamericana. (German-Spanish; audio book; special issue from Dichtungsring, magazine for literature. No. 37, 2009). ISSN  0724-6412 .
• Poemas Químicos. LOM Ediciones, Chile, 2010, ISBN 978-956-00-0190-0 .
  • German edition: Chemical poems. Shaker Media, Aachen 2011, ISBN 978-3-86858-701-2 .
• Chemical poems. Dos Madres Press, United States, 2013, ISBN 978-1-933675-98-5
• Our world without insects: part of nature disappears , Stuttgart: Kosmos 2014, ISBN 978-3-440-14336-0 .
• The naked brain: How neurotechnology is revolutionizing our lives , Darmstadt: Theiss, Konrad / WBG 2016, ISBN 978-3-8062-3278-3 .
• Engravings: Poems Spanish - German , translated from Spanish by the author, with a foreword by Raúl Zurita, Leipzig: Lychatz Verlag 2016, ISBN 978-3-942929-37-0 .
• (as translator): Chilean poetry in the eventful 20th century , Rimbaud-Verlag 2016, ISBN 978-3-89086-351-1 .
• Image power of substances: 2D crystals to make yourself , Arnshaugk-Verlag 2017, ISBN 978-3-944064-77-2 .
  • Edition in Spanish: Scientia et Ars - La fuerza pictórica de cristales súper-planos , Ediciones UC, Chile, 2019, ISBN 978-956-14-2469-2 .
• 222 Jews change the world , Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag 2019, ISBN 978-3-487-08607-1 .

as editor:

• M. Markus, SC Mueller and G. Nicolis, (Eds.): From chemical to biological organization , Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg 1988, ISBN 3-540-19264-6 .
• A. Holden, M. Markus and H. Othmer (Eds.): Nonlinear Wave Processes in Excitable Media , Plenum Press, New York 1991, ISBN 0-306-43800-3 .
• V. Pérez-Munuzuri, V. Pérez-Villar, LO Chua, M. Markus (Eds.): Discretely-coupled Dynamical Systems , World Scientific, Singapore 1997, ISBN 981-02-2912-7 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Mario Markus in the catalog of the German National Library
• Homepage of Mario Markus

Individual evidence

1. ↑ mariomarkus.com: Journalistic reports on computer graphics and Journalistic reports (literature and science)
2. ↑ in: Adolf Dittrich, Albert Hofmann , Hanscarl Leuner (eds.): Worlds of Consciousness , Volume 3: Experimental Psychology, Neurobiology and Chemistry, Publishing House for Science and Education, 1994, ISBN 3-86135-402-0
3. ↑ M. Markus, D. Kuschmitz, B. Hess: Chaotic dynamics in yeast glycolysis under periodic substrate input flux. In: FEBS Lett . 172: 235-238 (1984).
4. ^ M. Markus, B. Hess: Isotropic cellular automaton for modeling excitable media. In: Nature . 347: 56-58 (1990). (Image on the cover of Nature)
5. ^ M. Markus, Zs. Nagy-Ungvarai, B. Hess: Phototaxis of spiral waves. In: Science . 257, (1992), pp. 225-227.
6. ^ M. Markus, D. Boehm, M. Schmick: Simulations of vessel morphogenesis using cellular automata. In: Mathematical Biosciences. 156 (1999), pp. 191-206.
7. ^ M. Markus, G. Kloss, I. Kusch: Disordered waves in an homogeneous, motionless excitable medium. In: Nature. 371: 402-404 (1994).
8. ^ I. Kusch, M. Markus: Mollusc shell pigmentation: cellular automaton simulations and evidence for undecidability. In: Journal of theoretical Biology. 178: 333-340 (1996).
9. ↑ AP Munuzuri, V. Perez-Villar, M. Markus: Splitting of car waves in on active medium. In: Phys. Rev. Lett. 79 (1997), pp. 1941-1944.
10. ↑ M. Woltering, M. Markus: Annihilation of turbulence in excitable systems using pulses did inhibit growth activator. Physica. D 168/9 (2002), pp. 23-34.
11. ↑ K. Koetter, M. Markus: Double-diffusive fingering instability of a surfactant-glycerine-water drop in water. In: Europhysics Letters. 55 (2001), pp. 807-813.
12. ^ M. Markus, E. Goles: Cicadas showing up after a prime number of years. In: Math. Intelligencer. 24 (2002), pp. 30-33.
13. ↑ S. Viridi, M. Schmick, M. Markus: Experimental observations of oscillations and segregation in a binary granular mixture. In: Physical Review. E 74, 041301 (2006)