Gerd Sommerhoff

Gerd Walter Christian Sommerhoff OBE (born Wiesbaden, Germany 13 February 1915, died Cambridge, England 28 April 2002) was a pioneer of theoretical neuroscience and a noted humanist.

A great-grandson of the German composer Robert Schumann, he was living in England at the onset of the Second World War. As a foreign national, he spent at least two years in an internment camp in Canada[1] before returning to England where he took up a post teaching science at the Dragon School in Oxford.[2] While there, he developed what was really an early form of CBT without computers, using boxes of numbered cards, containing questions, answers, tutorial material, or descriptions of experiments, on a variety of different subjects.[3]

Sommerhoff later became a Research Fellow in Systems Theory at University College, London. In parallel with this position, he taught technology at Sevenoaks School. In 1984, he retired from teaching and moved to Trinity College, Cambridge.

Some of his students were Tim Hunt,[4] John Paul Morrison,[3] and Richard Veryard.

Early life and family

Gerd Sommerhoff and his twin sister were born in Wiesbaden, Germany, to Elizabeth Ruher and Walter Georg Sommerhoff, a wealthy banker who was born in New York to Elise Schumann, the third child of Robert and Clara Schumann. The Sommerhoff family resided in Haarlem, Netherlands, until the loss of the family fortune in the Wall Street crash and the death of their father "in compromising circumstances".[5] The two younger children moved to Ryde on the Isle of Wight in 1931 with their mother Elizabeth Sommerhoff when she married Major Bernard Francis Anne Vernon-Harcourt, while their elder brother, Walter Hans Sommerhoff, emigrated to Santiago, Chile.

Gerd Sommerhoff studied engineering at Zurich Polytechnic and philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University. Although Gerda Sommerhoff was exempted from internment as an enemy alien in 1939, Gerd Sommerhoff was interned in Canada until 1942. Gerda Sommerhoff, a model for Vogue magazine, sculptor and photographer, emigrated to Santiago, Chile, where she married Juan Eduardo Subercaseaux and had five children. Upon release from internment, Gerd Sommerhoff taught science at the Dragon School and presented science programmes for the BBC from 1960–1962 before being recruited to Sevenoaks School in 1963 by headmaster Kim Taylor.[6]

Child Sexual Abuse

Alice Hemmings reported historical allegations of sexual assault and abuse dating from 1976 in The Sevenoaks Chronicle. The assault was reported to the Kent Police force by Stuart Neilson in 2012.[7] Gerd Sommerhoff was also alleged to have displayed pornography or child pornography to pupils and to have made obscene sexual remarks that included boasts of bestiality. In a further development, Sevenoaks School agreed to settle a compensation claim by another pupil sexually abused by Gerd Sommerhoff at Sevenoaks School when he was 12 years old. There is evidence that those who worked with Sommerhoff were aware of and chose not to report the abuse.[8] Several further witnesses and victims have subsequently been identified, indicating that Gerd Sommerhoff was a preferential paedophile attracted to prepubescent and pubescent boys. He was also described on BBC News as "Sevenoaks School's Jimmy Savile".[9]

Personal Tribute

Further: My name is Miles Rowland (Grote House, 1981), who was a student at Sevenoaks School at the time of the alleged abuse. I was a keen a technologist who used the VISTA facilities founded and run by Gerd Sommerhof. In my experience, Gerd was a brilliant, kind man who would always offer good advice, without being condescending to me, with my fairly lo-tech projects. There were others at VISTA who, with huge encouragement from Gerd Sommerhof, were working on some very advanced (by the standards of the day) computer technology. I find it very hard to believe that this man would be capable of abusing his students. Just because eight victims have come forward and an isolated court settlement has been made, this does not prove the man's guilt. As he is no longer alive, I am very glad for him, that he did not have to endure the allegation in his lifetime.

Works

References

  1. ↑ Richard Brown Baker family papers
  2. ↑ Intellectual Autobiography by Richard Sorabji. In Metaphysics, Soul, and Ethics in Ancient Thought: Themes from the Work of Richard Sorabji, By Ricardo Salles. Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0-19-926130-7.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 J. Paul Morrison's autobiography. Accessed 16 June 2009.
  4. ↑ Autobiography of Nobel Prizewinner Tim Hunt
  5. ↑ Gerd Sommerhoff, Obituary, The Times, Friday 17 May 2002
  6. ↑ Brian Scragg, Sevenoaks School, A History (1993)
  7. ↑ Hemmings, Alice (8 November 2012). "Dead Sevenoaks teacher Gerd Sommerhoff accused of sexual abuse". Sevenoaks Chronicle. Retrieved 8 November 2012.
  8. ↑ Doran, Sean-Paul (7 November 2013). "Sevenoaks School settles sex abuse case out of court". Sevenoaks Chronicle. Retrieved 7 November 2013.
  9. ↑ Doran, Sean-Paul (18 November 2013). "Sevenoaks School teacher had 'six more victims' of sex abuse, claims accuser". Sevenoaks Chronicle. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
  10. ↑ http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02691012
  11. ↑ Sage Publishers

External links