User:Athel cb
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I am a biochemist (now retired) at the CNRS in Marseilles, formerly Birmingham (UK). I have an h-index of 68 (Google Scholar), and an Erdős number of 3, via Jorge Soto-Andrade and Winnie Li (a bit of a cheat, really, as I'm not a mathematician and barely understand the mathematics in the papers coauthored with Jorge Soto).
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In December 2025 I landed by chance on a compilation by |ScholarGPS of "Highly Ranked Scholars," and was surprised, amazed even, to find myself ranked at No. 9 in the world in the category Enzyme. I should be flattered, I suppose, but what this illustrates is the absurdity of such lists that one may find on the Internet. The site doesn't explain in a clear way how the ranking was arrived at, but it was clearly the work of a computer program, and if any human was involved it was someone with little or no knowledge of the enzyme literature. Much as I would like it otherwise, no one with any knowledge would rank me ahead of Robert H. Abeles, Robert A. Alberty, Stephen J. Benkovic, Britton Chance, Alan R. Fersht, Joseph S. Fruton, Gordon G. Hammes, Jeremy R. Knowles, Arthur Kornberg, Keith J. Laidler, Hans Neurath, Richard J. Roberts, Earl R. Stadtman and Chen-Lu Tsou, to name but a few.
Main interests: Biochemistry, especially enzymes, metabolic regulation, self-organization, metabolic control analysis, definition of life, biochemical evolution; physical chemistry; history and philosophy of science; Chile, and Latin America in general.
On any page, on any topic, if I see a red link I try to find a way to make it blue.
Edits I've done, and pages I've created
These are the pages I've created since I started on Wikipedia in June 2020:
Articles
- Robert Abeles
- Daniel Atkinson
- María Luz Cárdenas
- Waldo Cohn
- Sidney Colowick
- Direct linear plot
- Zacharias Dische
- Enzyme memory
- Eden Theatre, La Ciotat
- Joan Guinovart
- Jan-Hendrik S. Hofmeyr
- Bernard Horecker
- Christian Jung
- Bengt Mannervik
- Enrique Meléndez-Hevia
- Hermann Niemeyer
- Jacques Ricard
- Herbert M. Sauro
- Alberto Sols
- Tetranucleotide hypothesis
- Tsou plot
- Tito Ureta
- John Westley
- Robert Abeles
Template
Disambiguation
Redirection pages
- Athelstan Cornish-Bowden (biochemist) → Athel Cornish-Bowden[1]
- Athelstan Hall Cornish-Bowden (land surveyor) → Athelstan Cornish-Bowden[1]
- Biochemical oscillations → Biological rhythm
- Catalytic constant → turnover number
- Drago tree → Dracaena draco
- Endo-1,4-β-xylanase → Xylanase[2]
- Enterobactin synthase → 2,3-dihydroxybenzoate—serine ligase[2]
- Exo-alpha-sialidase → Neuraminidase[2]
- Guluronate-specific alginate lyase → Poly(alpha-L-guluronate) lyase[2]
- Hanes plot → Hanes–Woolf plot
- Harden–Young ester → Fructose 1,6-bisphosphate
- Harden-Young ester → Fructose 1,6-bisphosphate
- HK1 → Hexokinase I
- HK2 → Hexokinase II
- HK3 → Hexokinase III
- Jacques Ricard (biophysicist) → Jacques Ricard
- Jacques Richard (ice hockey player) → Jacques Richard
- List of people from Marseilles → List of people from Marseille[3]
- Mannuronate-specific alginate lyase → Poly(beta-D-mannuronate) lyase[2]
- Mikhail Volkenshtein → Mikhail Volkenstein[4]
- Retinoid isomerohydrolase → All-trans-retinyl-palmitate hydrolase[2]
Other pages
These are other pages I've worked significantly on:
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In addition to these I've made a huge number of minor edits to pages about small places in Chile (and a few more substantial edits, for example for El Quisco). That has become an obsession, and a bit pointless, as I doubt whether any readers of Wikipedia in English really care who represents Sierra Gorda in the Senate. However, if the information is there it should be correct.
Time line
- 11th June 2020. First registered. 0 edits.
- 11th June 2021. First birthday. 2113 edits. 6 pages created (apart from redirection pages.)
- 27th October 2021. Passed 5000 edits.
- 11th June 2022. Second birthday. 7659 edits.
- 31st July 2022. Passed 10000 edits (editing Stemod-13(17)-ene synthase, of all obscure pages).
- 11th June 2023. Third birthday. 14 185 edits.
- 26th June 2023. Passed 15000 edits (editing prunasin β-glucosidase).
- 11th June 2024. Fourth birthday. 18 294 edits. 14 articles created (apart from redirection and disambiguation pages).
- 9th December 2024. Passed 20000 edits (editing Barnet Woolf — a significant article, for a change)
- 28th May 2025. Blocked from editing (actually a block on my IP address). Fortunately unblocked the same day.
- 11th June 2025. Fifth birthday. 22 027 edits. 23 articles created (apart from redirection and disambiguation pages).
- Early July 2025. Blocked again for no intelligible reason. Request for unblocking rejected, with no reason given.
- 16th November 2025. A quick check revealed that the block was no longer active. Who knows how long that will last?
The places I've been
| Place of birth: |  ← |
| Long enough to have a postal address: |  ←  ←  ←  ←.svg){kind=small} ←← ← ←  ← |
| Days or weeks: |                                |
| Less than two days: |                |
| Airports only: |      |
| Places I've lectured: | ←← ← ← ← ←← ← ← ← ← ← ← ← ←
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Who am I in real life?
My real name is Athel Cornish-Bowden. Anyone who knows me in real life will have easily guessed that from the way I sign, but it's not so obvious for others. When I first registered for Wikipedia I signed like that, but when I realized that most people didn't I changed to what you see now. The A in my given name is pronounced like the a in "hat" [æ]; most people say it like that, but I've heard it with the a of "hate" [ɛɪ̯]. "Cornish" is pronounced as you'd expect. The "Bow" in "Bowden" can be pronounced like "bow" or like "bow", whichever you prefer. That sounds a bit obscure, so I rephrase: it can be pronounced like "beau" or like "bough", whichever you prefer: [bəʊ̯] or [baʊ̯]. The name is common in the southwest, Devon in particular, where it is pronounced ['baʊ̯dən] ("bough dən"). My great-grandfather William Bowden was from Devon and pronounced it accordingly. However, my great-grandmother thought that sounded "common" and insisted that he change it to ['bəʊ̯dən] ("beau dən"), and that's how most of us say it today. The name is also common in Greater Manchester (with nothing much in between, so it probably arose independently in two places), where it is pronounced ['bəʊ̯dən] or ['bo:dən].