About
the Author
Your
"Humble Human",
Douglas
Drenkow
Hello! My name is
Douglas Drenkow (the "w" is silent...I rarely am) and I hope you
share my lifelong fascination with the world of life!
You may read in detail below
about my scientific education and works but please
allow me to first tell you something about myself.
One of my earliest and
fondest memories was collecting the pictures of 400 different animals
given out, a few a week, by a local grocery store and pasting them into their
well-labeled places within the official scrapbook, which I carried with me
not only to school but also everywhere else I went (including on vacation
back to the Middle West) -- I showed all the pictures and named all the
animals to every one of my (undoubtedly) long-suffering family, friends,
and teachers. I came to truly appreciate the wonderful variety of
animal life on Earth (which, raised as a Catholic, I still consider as
nothing short of miraculous, even as I believe in the process of evolution
-- the Lord works in mysterious ways).
By the time I reached junior
high, I was determined to become a paleontologist, the next Roy Chapman
Andrews.
In high school, my focus
turned to plant life. Our family received in the mail a package of
Black-Seeded Simpson leaf lettuce from a local bank (come to think of it,
it's funny how local businesses inadvertently played such ultimately
significant roles in my life). We planted the seeds in some soil we
scraped up around the lot and placed in an old barbeque. Remarkably
(considering we've never again stayed ahead of the bugs with such a leafy
crop), it produced many delicious salads...and "pancakes and
lettuce", with sweet sour-cream dressing, a childhood favorite for
Dad (there's no accounting for taste!). Then some radishes and
carrots and strawberries along the driveway. And then tomatoes in an
ever-more-elaborate "hydroponic" set-up out back.
Eventually, every square foot of bare ground around here was planted in
one vegetable crop or another; and ultimately, two friends and I took over
the huge backyard of one's parents -- that year our families "ate
healthy" (the underweight gaining weight; the overweight
losing). The Organic Gardening magazine was our bible.
Taking biology and botany in
high school, listening to the stories my Dad told of growing up on the
farm during the Depression, and thoroughly enjoying my frequent outings to
every garden shop within 10 miles, I decided to enroll in the Plant Science
program at the University of California at Davis, a world center of
agricultural research (and an all-around great university).
However, the more I learned
of life -- in textbooks, lectures, laboratories, and the world-at-large --
the more I fell in love with life...in all forms (not just green,
nutritious and delicious). My studies gravitated towards entomology,
with an emphasis on using "biological controls" (carefully
selected pathogens, parasites, and predators) as alternatives to chemical
insecticides vs. significant insect pests. Today, such
considerations are standard practice in "integrated pest
management", typically using biological controls for long-term
prevention and chemical controls for short-term outbreaks; but back in the
1980s, there was a great deal of opposition, from pragmatic growers as
well as petrochemical suppliers.
I finally made some inroads
by putting the enormous amount of research I had accumulated onto computer
disks and teaching myself BASIC computer programming to access my
data-bases: After all, biological controls are applied food webs;
and what better to facilitate the tracing of complicated ecological
interrelationships ("what eats what") than computerized
cross-references? Today, we call them "hyperlinks".
As you can read below, I
also developed educational software and handbooks in other fields of
interest; and I was able to distribute my works worldwide, as through the
Entomological Society of America.
Then, in the late 1990s, my
beloved mother suddenly and quite unexpectedly passed away, leaving my
dear old dad and me to face the world alone, together. Poring
through the family albums, I came to appreciate the pricelessness of the
images of our loved ones; and I developed a talent that had long remained
rudimentary: My love of life, which had inspired my "left
brain" to create so many scientific works, now inspired my
"right brain" to create artistic works. With God-given
talents, I have been pleased and privileged to paint portraits, for many
valued subjects and clients.
As you might have guessed by
now, my favorite period in history was the Renaissance, when art and
science went hand-in-hand, to discover and defend the truth. The Age
of Reason, the American Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Space
Age, and the Information Age would not have come about if Western thought
had not been "re-born" with the artistic and scientific advances
of the Renaissance.
So much for history.
Right here and now, I am popularizing the life sciences for people both
young and old, far and wide. I hope you will enjoy reading about
these natural wonders as much as I enjoy writing about them. What's
more, I think we can learn a lot not only about plants and animals but
also about ourselves by studying the world of life.
As Shakespeare wrote,
"one touch of nature makes the whole world kin."
Or as the Bible says,
"And God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it was very
good."
Scientific
Education
Scientific
Software & Handbooks
Scientific
Projects Related to Film
Scientific Education
Arcadia
High School: National
Merit Scholarship & One of Six
Valedictorians (4.0 GPA), in a graduating class of over 800
University
of California, Davis: Alpha Zeta Award
(Top Freshman); Regents Scholar; the Ben A.
Madsen, Robert K. Malcolm, & Peter J. Shields scholarships; Bachelor
of Science Degree with Highest Honors in "Plant Science"
(Agriculture & Botany), supplemented with courses in Zoology,
Nematology, etc. as well as Individual Study in Entomology
Graduate Record
Examination in Biology: 99th Percentile (in U.S.)
National
Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship (in Plant Physiology):
I declined the honor, to pursue a career in freelance writing (If there
are kids reading this, please do as I say, not as I did: Never pass
up an opportunity to continue your education as far as you can -- not
only will you learn more but also people will take you more
seriously. I'm proud of what I've accomplished, but I could have
done more -- more readily, more profitably -- if I had earned a higher
degree).
Honor
Society of Phi Kappa Phi: Member in Good Standing, 27 Years
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Scientific
Software & Handbooks
Self-Published,
Sold Worldwide
Software Reviews:
Most Titles Judged "Excellent" by CHOICE (An American
Library Association Publication), May, June, & July/Aug. 1993
Note: Clicking on the
links below will take you to samples of my writing and supporting
materials.
Please also note that in the
original computer software, entering the code numbers etc. that are
displayed within the text and indexes of these data-bases would bring up
the appropriate, cross-referenced entries -- an early form of hyperlinks:
Starting in the 1980s, I was helping to "pioneer" the use of
computer data-bases as educational reference materials for college
students and practicing professionals.
I hope to one day (soon)
create HTML (Internet-browser-compatible) versions of at least some of
this material and release them on CD-ROMs.
Handbooks: As
noted below, I published several software titles also as handbooks;
however, the software versions had the distinct advantage of computerized
cross-referencing.
Biological
Sciences
As Distributed by the Entomological
Society of America
Computerized
Biological Control (Software with Illustration Booklet):
Controlling insects without
pesticides, as in gardens -- also distributed to Third World agricultural
agencies ("For the researcher or anyone who has a fascination and
interest in insects, this is a must." -- Earth News,
March/April 1993)
Computerized
Vegetable Gardening (Software with Illustration
Booklet): Everything you need to know about (organically) growing
dozens of the
most commonly grown vegetable crops at home
Food
Webs of Insects & Their Kin (Software): With Tens of
Thousands of Cross-Referenced Pieces of Data on Agriculturally &
Environmentally Significant Species, Both Beneficial & Injurious
A
Computerized Dictionary of Entomology (Software):
A fundamental work (a dictionary) on a fundamental subject
(entomology), with content integrated by conceptual indexes (as on anatomy
or ecology); "a
nifty program" -- American Entomologist, Summer 1996
Discovering Insects (Software
& Handbook): Introductory Entomology, with an Automated Identification Key
The
Animal Kingdom (Handbook) a.k.a. How Animals Are Alike Yet
Different (Software): Introductory Zoology
The
Plant Kingdom (Handbook): Introductory Botany
The
Tree of Life (Software): Introductory Biology
Fermentation
& Respiration (Software): Introductory Biochemistry
Physical Sciences
The Periodic Table of
the Elements (Software): Introductory Chemistry
Qualitative
Chemical Analysis (Software): Introductory Inorganic Chemistry
Conversion Factors (Software):
Mathematical Calculations for Science
Social
Sciences
Dynamics
Within the Economy (Software): An animated schematic of national
accounting, showing the interrelationships of the components of GDP
The
Constitution of the United States (Software & Handbook):
Used in a collegiate
Constitutional Law course
Comparative
Religions (Software & Handbook): One of my best sellers.
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Scientific Projects
Related to Film
A
Model of Root Tip Development (8-minute 16-mm Film & VHS
Videotape): A College Senior Class Project (a bit too ambitious)
Secrets
of Success (1-Hour Teleplay): A Nature Documentary on Insect Life
Killer
Instincts (2-Hour Screenplay): A Sci-Fi Adventure with Giant Insects!
Ancient
Egyptian Animals: A Research Report in Support of a
Production Company's Project on the Exodus
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