Dr. Alois Treindl

Alois Treindl (born march 7, 1950) is the founder and director of Astrodienst AG. He was born in Germany and came to Zürich, Switzerland in 1976 as a research assistant in Physics at the Swiss Federal Institute (ETH). Alois graduated from ETH with a PhD in physics in 1981. During his graduate time, he started to be interested in various areas beyond the limits of conventional science, e.g. humanistic psychology, states of altered consciousness, parapsychology and finally astrology. Astrology was for him a way to bring his main fields of interest together, his fascination with computing (an extensive programmer since 1970) and his curiosity about the human psyche. A chance encounter with a second hand astrology book got him started in the summer of 1979, and he was fascinated by the subject which has remained a passion ever since. Alois was surprised the find a number of astrology books at the university's library, among them the main work of the leading German astrologer of the 20th century, Thomas Ring, the four volumes of Astrologische Menschenkunde. He started studying with Thomas Ring for the next few years, until the death of the master in 1983.

Early on Alois wrote his first computer program to draw colour charts, and offered a computer service under the Astrodienst brand since January 1980. He soon shared his planetary routines (PLACALC and SWISS EPHEMERIS) with the community of astrological programmers, and they have become the industry's standard tools for astrological computing.

In 1983, Alois joined forces with Peter Isler and Astrodienst AG was incorporated, which at the time was a computing service for the professional astrological community.

Liz Greene

In 1984 Alois met Liz Greene for the first time, and went to study with her in 1985, which proved to be a turning point in his life. The two of them came to cooperate very closely. He developed the software, she provided the model of chart interpretation and her extensive astrological experience. The idea behind this collaboration was to recreate Liz Greene's approach to horoscope interpretation on a computer system. What was initially deemed hopelessly complex proved to be achievable within a very short time span of two years, after all. Alois had mastered the current techniques from the field of artificial intelligence and knowledge engineering, and they found a way to take a computer-generated holistic look at the chartwheel and thus produce an interpretation which offered a detailed representation of the person involved. The cook-book-style interpretations ventured by competitors were thus overcome by the Psychological Horoscope Analysis, released as a product in 1987. It was soon to be followed by other types of astrological reports.

Internet

In 1987, at a time when the world wide web was not yet spoken of, Alois Treindl was well aware of the future importance of worldwide computer networks. At this date Astrodienst began building its private network of worldwide partner companies, based on modem links. In the 90ies, the Internet domain astro.com was secured early on and the website started in 1996. What began with a free atlas and time zone service as a gift to the astrology community expanded and eventually reached a much larger audience than anyone would have dared to dream of.

A lot of the software behind the products at Astrodienst AG is the work of Alois Treindl.

Personal

In his free time, Alois takes care of the forum at www.astro.com. He loves reading, and is rarely seen without a book or newspaper. In recent years, he has taken up sport, mostly bicycling and running.

Four times so far Alois has run the Zürich Marathon, twice the marathon Nice - Cannes (April 2015), and once the New York Marathon (2018).

Alois divides his life between Zurich and his secondary residences in the Var, France, and in Paris.

Awards for a lifetime achievement

Alois Treindl has been honoured twice in autumn 2016. On October 8th, the German Association of Astrologers (DAV - Deutscher Astrologenverband) awarded him the ″Golden Jupiter 2016″. In his laudatory speech, Rolf Liefeld mentioned the major importance of the ephemeris calculation softwares ″Swiss Ephemeris″ and PLACALC, which are now used by all notable astrological computer software. Liefeld also praised the significance of the chart calculation services at www.astro.com, AstroWiki and Astro-Databank as important pillars for the astrological community.

A week later, on October 15th, Alois Treindl received the ″Lifetime Achievement Award″ at the ISAR conference 2016 in Costa Mesa, California. ISAR (International Society for Astrological Research) is the largest international astrology association, and this prize was also given in recognition of his life′s work.