Gregory Lane-Serff
Personal Information

Back to my unofficial home page
e-mail: g.f.lane-serff@umist.ac.uk


I live in Marple, which is a small town in between Stockport and the Peak District, with my wife Katherine and children Christopher and Harriet. Marple has its own community web-site, with lots of information about the area, pub-guides, etc.
My interests include gardening (often more theoretical than practical!), walking (ditto), winemaking (this time concentrating on the practical), playing Go (a Chinese/Japanese game played with black and white stones on a 19 x 19 grid, though I haven't played much recently) and beating my children at computer games (this is getting harder).

Where did that name come from?

The Serff family came to England from Germany around 1880. My grandfather appears to have added the maiden name of my great-grandmother (Lane, also one of his middle names) around the Second World War to give Lane-Serff. With my three sisters all married, there are now only six people using the surname "Lane-Serff" so far as I know (my parents in Cheltenham and the four of us in Marple). I know of another branch of the Serff family who came to England between the wars, with one of them now living in Ireland (via USA). I have done some more detailed research into my family history.

A potted biography

I was born in London, lived in Ealing until I was about three and then we moved to Maidstone, Kent. After school (Maidstone Grammar School) I went to Robinson College, Cambridge and stayed on to do a PhD and a research fellowship. I also fitted in a year at the ADC Theatre in Cambridge. After a total of ten years in Cambridge, during which time I got married to Katherine (nee Burnett) and our two children were born, I moved to another research fellowship at Southampton in the Oceanography Department.
In addition to my research at Southampton I was active in the local branch of the trade union (AUT), and was on the executive of SLAUT for a number of years. I was also involved with the after-school kids club at my children's primary school, ending up as chair of the management committee. I took up my present job at UMIST on 1 January 2000.