Heinz Hemken

Heinz Hemken is a dreamer and a dilettante, a scientist, an artist, and a wanderer. Born in Pasadena, California, he eventually studied at the University of California at San Diego where he majored in biochemistry and minored in visual arts. After a year studying organic synthesis in the graduate program at the University of Rochester under Richard H. Schlesinger, he dropped out, spent several months in indolence, then went to Mexico City to study medicine. There he remained for 15 years, during which he finished the medical school curriculum but did not obtain the degree. Instead he studied pharmacology and medicinal chemistry at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional (CINVESTAV-IPN) under Pedro A. Lehmann, obtaining a Master’s degree.

It was during his years at CINVESTAV that he learned computer programming, a skill needed for the molecular modeling involved in his thesis work. These were the heady days of the personal computer revolution, where desktop computers suddenly flooded the entire planet. A fascination with the cognitive potential of computing machines has dogged him ever since.

He has been a software developer in the Silicon Valley area since 2000, working in biotech, banking, computer storage, database virtualization, and medical device software testing. All the while, the germ of an invention gradually grew, and it eventually came to fruition in the form of several patents and his first novel, Capture.

He lives with his wife Sandra, whom he met during his years in Mexico City, and some cats on the San Mateo Peninsula, next to the San Francisco Bay.