science

Nevil Schoenmakers

Nevil Schoenmakers is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Nevil Schoenmakers rather than just read about it. In short: Nevil Martin Schoenmakers (2 February 1956 – 30 March 2019) was an Australian-born cannabis breeder known for founding the first cannabis seedbank, which was called "The Seed Bank of Holland", in the early 1980s in the Netherlands. This was also the first seed company to advertise directly to the public in High Times magazine.

Key takeaways

Nevil Schoenmakers belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Nevil Schoenmakers to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Nevil Schoenmakers from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Nevil Martin Schoenmakers (2 February 1956 – 30 March 2019) was an Australian-born cannabis breeder known for founding the first cannabis seedbank, which was called "The Seed Bank of Holland", in the early 1980s in the Netherlands. This was also the first seed company to advertise directly to the public in High Times magazine.

Biography Schoenmakers was born in Perth, Western Australia to Dutch parents, Schoenmakers moved to the Netherlands in 1976. There he started growing cannabis for personal use. He soon discovered that the commercially available Thai, Colombian and African strains did not perform well in the Netherlands's northern European climate, nor indoors under artificial lighting. Realizing that the solution to the problem was better genetics, he decided that the best way to obtain good genetics was to start a seed bank, and in 1984 Schoenmakers established "The Seedbank." It was around this time that he met David Paul Watson, a cannabis collector and breeder from California better known as "Sam the Skunkman." Schoenmakers was able to purchase from Watson seeds of the premier Californian varieties "Original Haze", "Skunk #1", "Early Girl" and "California Orange." From then on, Schoenmakers collected many other potent cannabis strains from various breeders which he crossed to create his own strains. In the process he was able to cross equatorial sativas with Afghani indicas to create strains that were more suited to the temperate climates and indoor growing mediums of his European and U.S. customers. By 1986, Schoenmakers's cannabis seed company had become a runaway success with sales to more than 15,000 different growers in the United States alone. In 1990 Schoenmakers became a target of the DEA Operation Green Merchant because it was illegal to ship seeds from the Netherlands to the US. An indictment had been lodged in New Orleans, charging him with the sale of marijuana seeds to undercover agents and indoor growers in the New Orleans area. On 24 July 1990, he was arrested by the Australian authorities at the request of the U.S. government while visiting family in Perth. Schoenmakers was incarcerated in Fremantle jail for almost a year without bail while awaiting his extradition hearing. On 21 June 1991, just weeks before the date of his Federal Court hearing, he was finally granted bail and subsequently disappeared from Australia. For some time after Schoenmakers's return to the Netherlands, he was on the FBI's most wanted list, but because his activities were legal under Dutch law his extradition was refused and the charges were ultimately dropped. In 1991 Schoenmakers sold The Seed Bank to Sensi Seeds where he worked for a short time as their head breeder, before founding the Greenhouse Seed company with Arjan Roskam. By 1998, already widely regarded as the most successful modern cannabis breeder with multiple High Times Cannabis Cup wins, Schoenmakers sold his share of Greenhouse Seeds and left the limelight to focus on other interests. Later in life Schoenmakers became involved with the movement to legalise medicinal cannabis in Australia. He coauthored a submission to a NSW government inquiry into the matter. Nevil Schoenmakers died on 30 March 2019 after a fight with cancer.

In popular culture Schoenmakers was described by High Times magazine in 1985 as the "King of Cannabis". he was the first cannabis breeder to export cannabis seeds from the Netherlands to the rest of the world, and is credited with creating many of the most popular award winning strains, such as Nevil's Haze, Northern Lights Haze, Super Silver Haze, Nevil's Skunk, Super Skunk, Silver Pearl, Silver Haze and many others. His breeding with Northern Lights, a mostly Indica strain originally developed in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, became an inspiration for indoor Indicas, and the Northern Lights genetics are found in the pedigrees of nearly all of the best modern Indica lines. He is best remembered for the F1 hybrid Northern Lights 5 X Haze. This hybrid and its daughters have dominated the Cannabis Cup from the 1980s to the present day. The original Northern Lights 5 X Haze plant of Nevil's has been living on through clones and still wins championship awards. It is this cross that led to many of the modern medicinal strains that are popular today.

References

External links Sydney Morning Herald, 21 February 2015, "King of cannabis Nevil Schoenmakers stages a quiet comeback" http://www.smh.com.au/national/king-of-cannabis-nevil-schoenmakers-stages-a-quiet-comeback-20150220-13iazv.html Australian Business Review, 21 May 2015, "Pot shots risk your cash stash going up in smoke" http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/pot-shots-risk-your-cash-stash-going-up-in-smoke/story-e6frg9lo-1227361935317.html Australian Business Review, 20 May 2015, "Norfolk Island shows us up as dopey mainlanders" http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/norfolk-island-shows-us-up-as-dopey-mainlanders/story-e6frg9lo-1227361372132.html

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Nevil Schoenmakers

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Nevil Schoenmakers claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Nevil Schoenmakers before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Nevil Schoenmakers ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Nevil Schoenmakers

In research: Nevil Schoenmakers appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Nevil Schoenmakers in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Nevil Schoenmakers is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1956 births, 2019 deaths, Australian expatriates in the Netherlands, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Nevil Schoenmakers outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Nevil Schoenmakers in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Nevil Schoenmakers means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Nevil Schoenmakers out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Nevil Schoenmakers in simple terms?

Why does Nevil Schoenmakers matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Nevil Schoenmakers?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Nevil Schoenmakers.