Peter Hegemann: A scientist who sees setbacks as part of success

For Peter Hegemann, the Nobel Prize does not come after a straight rise. Those who know him remember above all his perseverance. “Peter Hegemann is a great scientist and a super nice colleague and person,” says Christina Beck, press spokeswoman for the Max Planck Society, who worked with him. “What I admired about him is simply how many, many setbacks he had to accept before he achieved this breakthrough. It wasn't a sure-fire success to unveil this secret about the canal rhodopsins."

Success often comes with risk

In fact, Hegemann learned early on that scientific success is often associated with risk. When the young researcher was faced with an important career decision, his supervisor at the time made him an offer. “The boss said, I remember it exactly, Dieter Oesterhelt back then, you can work with me, you can stay as long as you want, until you retire. Or you can do your own stuff and then after five years you have to disappear.” Hegemann talked about this episode a few years ago in a Humboldt University podcast.

The scientist, born in Münster in 1954, chose the uncertain path. After studying chemistry in Münster and Munich and earning his doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, he went to the USA. He later became a professor in Regensburg and finally at the Humboldt University in Berlin.

Hegemann found some things at school boring

There was initially little sign of a research career in his childhood. Hegemann described his upbringing in Aachen as very traditional. He grew up in a medical family and went to a humanistic high school, where he had to translate boring reports about the Roman and Greek wars for years. He didn't like school - with the exception of chemistry, physics, biology, art and music. But he enjoyed playing the flute in the orchestra and riding his motorcycle.

Setbacks are the norm

Setbacks were never the exception in his career, but rather the norm. «You always fail. I would say that failure is our daily bread. We are once again doing new experiments in new directions. Most experiments go wrong and if you can't tolerate that, then research won't work either," says Hegemann.

Scientific progress often occurs precisely where something does not go as expected. «It's always a combination of chance and looking closely and then realizing that you have something interesting on your hands. And I don't push aside the things that don't fit the concept, but I always try to motivate my employees to take a particularly close look at the results that don't fit the concept." Nature is different “than what our little minds imagine.”

The scientific world is worried

Hegemann looks with concern at a science that is increasingly influenced by publication numbers and key figures. “I would particularly recommend to my colleagues not to evaluate the number of publications after three or four years among young people, but rather to evaluate the originality of the research - which unfortunately my colleagues do not do,” criticized Hegemann in a video in 2023. “And that means that young people hardly have the courage to tackle really new, difficult topics and work on them over many years. And that has to change."

“He is fearless, simply fearless,” says Astrid Dostert, managing director of the Faculty of Life Sciences at Humboldt University. “He has no problem being the only one with a different opinion.”