The origins of the revolution in neuroscience: Georg Nagel and Peter Hegemann

It began in botany and biochemistry, respectively with the Germans Georg Nagel and Peter Hegemann, the path that in just a few years revolutionized the study of the brain, with the experimental contribution of the American Karl Deisseroth.

Georg Nagel, 73, is a biologist and biophysicist. Born in 1953 in Weingarten, he graduated from the University of Konstanz and in 1988 received his doctorate from the University of Frankfurt, at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics. He had previously worked for a period in the United States, between Yale University and Rockefeller University. From 1992 to 2004 he headed a research group in the Department of Biophysical Chemistry of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics in Frankfurt and since 2004 he has been a professor at the University of Würzburg, initially in the Department of Molecular Plant Physiology and Biophysics, and since 2019 in the Department of Neurophysiology.

Peter Hegemann is 72 years old. Born in Münster in 1954, he grew up in Aachen and, after a period of humanistic studies at the age of 21, he enrolled at the University of Münster to study chemistry and later switched to biochemistry, at the Free University of Munich. After graduating he obtained his doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry and then spent a period of time working in the USA, then returned to Germany, first at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, from 1993 at the University of Regensburg as a professor and since 2004 he has been professor of experimental biochemistry at the Humboldt University of Berlin.