Erwin Neher

Erwin Neher studied physics in Munich and at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He received a PhD from the Institute of Technology in Munich in 1970. He spent sabbaticals at Yale University (1975/76) and at the California Institute of Technology (1989). Presently he is director of the Membrane Biophysics Department at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany. His research interests were originally focussed on ion channels and Ca++ signals in the nervous system. More recently he studied the release of neurotransmitters and hormones. Both the mechanism of exocytosis as well as the modulation of release during short-term synaptic plasticity are topics of his current research.

For his development of the patch clamp technique for recording channel activity, he received the 1991 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (together with Bert Sakmann) as well as several other national and international awards. He is a member of the Göttingen Academy of Science and of the Academia Europaea, as well as a Foreign Associate member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) and of the Royal Society, London.