Professor Erwin Neher, 1991 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine

Professor Erwin Neher serves as Director of the Membrane Biophysics Department at the Max-Planck-Institut für Biophysikalische Chemie in Göttingen, Germany. He received his PhD in Physics from the Institute of Technology in Munich. His research interests have focused on studies of ion channels in nervous signaling and exocytosis. For his development of the patch clamp technique for recording ion 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. More recently Professor Neher has been working on neurotransmitter release and on the mechanisms responsible for short-term synaptic plasticity. He is a Foreign Associate member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), and of the Royal Society (London). He co-chairs the Managing Board of the European Neuroscience Institute, Göttingen.