Bio

James L. Sudmeier is a scientist and writer originally from Minneapolis, Minn.  He graduated from Shattuck School, a military academy in Faribault, Minn., where he was an editor of the school paper and an officer in the ROTC program. He graduated cum laude with a BA degree from Carleton College, a liberal arts college in Northfield, Minn., where he was a chemistry major. He was active in dramatics at both Shattuck and Carleton. He earned his PhD degree in chemistry from Princeton University and became an Assistant Professor at UCLA for five years, and then an Associate Professor at UC Riverside for 13 years. He spent sabbatical years at Oxford University, England, and Chalmers Institute in Göteborg, Sweden, with another eight months of research in Karlsruhe and Tübingen, Germany. He served as a Senior Lecturer at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston for some 28 years until his retirement in 2013.  Dr. Sudmeier is author of some 70 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals plus several patents and educational films.

In 2006, he won the first-place Platinum REMI Award at the Houston Film Festival for screenwriting of Patton’s Secret Mission. It is the true story of the Hammelburg raid, created in collaboration with German Army Lt. Col. Peter Domes and M.Sgt. Martin Heinlein. Research for the screenplay involved four trips to Europe over several years and interviews with all surviving combatants and eyewitnesses.

In 2017 he published his first book Patton: The Madness behind the Genius in paperback, and co-wrote with Frenchman Jerome Leclerc the article The Shelling of Patton’s Nancy HQ for After the Battle No. 176.  In 2020 the hardcover of his Patton psychobiography entitled Patton’s Madness: The Dark Side of a Battlefield Genius was published by Stackpole Books. Sudmeier is married, has two married children—one living in France, the other in Sweden, and he has six grandchildren. He enjoys skiing, golf, bicycling, canoeing, and travel.