Welcome to Peter Schattner's Home Page

Sue and Peter Whether you've stopped by because you are a personal friend, because you know me from my book Sex, Love, and DNA: What Molecular Biology Teaches Us About Being Human, because you found my bird and animal photos on-line, because you're looking for genealogical information on the Schattner, Schmerler, Steinherz, Schwarz and Landeis/Landesman Families, or simply because you stumbled across this page during your Web wanderings, I hope you'll take a few moments to let me tell you a little about myself. By the way, on the left, that's me and my wife Sue at the Monte Verde Waterfall in Costa Rica.

My New Book

At the moment most of my energy is focused on the publication of my new book Sex, Love, and DNA: What Molecular Biology Teaches Us About Being Human. Please do visit my new website at peterschattner.com which describes the book and why I am so excited about it. Thanks!

Travels

Sue and I enjoy traveling. I have traveled to some 50 countries over the years. I love experiencing the vast richness of natural wonders and wildlife on this planet. Even more, I enjoy connecting with people from different cultures and backgrounds and learning how to bridge our differences to discover our underlying similarities.

In September 2015 I visited central Ecuador. In March 2014 Sue and I traveled to Northwest Mexico and Southeastern Arizona, while in February 2013 we visited several National Parks in Northern India. The summer of 2011 saw us in the Mato Grosso region of Brazil and 2010 we were in Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Some of our photos from these trips did come out quite nicely. Do take a look at them, if you like (depending on your browser you may need to scroll down a bit to see the images).
Wildlife photos from Ecuador are here.
Pictures from the Mexico/Arizona trip are here.
The India photos are located here.
The Brazil photos can be found here.
And the Africa photos are here.

I also made a couple of fun "cat" videos while I was in Africa, one about lions and the other about leopards.

Work and Play

I have always been fascinated by the worlds of science and technology. I've generally earned my daily "bread" in somewhere in science or engineering - having worked at various times as physicist, electronic engineer, software engineer, biomedical engineer and bio-informatics engineer. Most recently I've worked in bioinformatics, both independently and at the University of California. Previously I worked largely in the private sector, at companies such as SRI, Diasonics Ultrasound (now a division of General Electric Ultrasound), Diasonics MRI (now part of Toshiba) and Teknekron (now Integrated Automation). If you are interested in learning more about my professional interests, please take a look at new website that describes my professional life as well as my new book.

However, work and science have always been only part of my life. My other interests over the years have ranged from rock music and left-wing politics to animals, wildlife photography, languages (and on occasion even dog sledding.)

I've also been involved with lots of volunteer work. In the last few years I haved volunteered for organizations such as:

and briefly for:

Sar-El, Volunteers for Israel
ARCAS, a Guatemalan Wildlife Rescue Organization
Lion Encounter, a lion breeding program in Zimbabwe

In the past, other groups I have volunteered with included:

Touchstone Support Network
Furry Friends Foundation Pet Assisted Therapy Services
Pets in Need
CRECE Central American Refugee Committee
Vanguard Public Foundation
The Funding Exchange
The Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews

Perhaps my experiences at Yellowstone at age 12 help explain my life life-long love of wildlife. (That's me in the car, hand-feeding the bears.)

Last - but not least - about 20 years ago I stumbled into the world of genealogy and discovered I enjoyed tracing family branches all over the world - where they had often been dispersed as a result of the Holocaust of World War II, and doing something to help bring them back together. I even wrote an article (originally published in the "Enlighten Journal Magazine" describing how I came to the world of genealogy). I have included my information on the Schattner, Schmerler, Steinherz, Schwarz and Landeis Families as part of this Website to help people from our families become connected and learn more about our family roots.

Feedback and Acknowledgements

I enjoy receiving e-mail at schattnerATalumDOTswarthmoreDOTedu (just replace the "AT" with "@" and the "DOT"s with "."s. (Writing my address this way will hopefully cut down on the amount of automated junk email I receive). If you have feedback on my website, or just want to say "hello", I'd be pleased to hear from you. Please do not send me unsolicited advertisements, though. Thanks.

This page last updated on 04/21/13