Tobias Bonhoeffer

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Tobias Bonhoeffer (born January 9, 1960 in Berkeley , California) is a German-American neurobiologist. He is director of the department Synapses - Circuits - Plasticity at the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology . His father is the neurobiologist Friedrich Bonhoeffer , who was director at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen.

Live and act

Bonhoeffer studied physics at the University of Tübingen . He received his doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen. As a postdoctoral fellow he worked at Rockefeller University (USA) and at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt am Main. He then headed an independent working group at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich, before being appointed director at the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology in 1998. Tobias Bonhoeffer was Section Chairman of the Biological-Medical Section of the Max Planck Society between 2008 and 2011 . In 2017 he was elected Chairman of the Scientific Council of the Max Planck Society.

In mid-2008 he was nominated as founding president of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) in Maria Gugging near Vienna, which as a postgraduate institution aims to become a top institute for basic research from 2009. Bonhoeffer's definitive appointment should take place in autumn 2008. On July 21, 2008, Bonhoeffer announced that it would be waiving the offered leadership of the IST for personal reasons. In 2014 Bonhoeffer was appointed to the Board of Governors of the British Wellcome Trust . In 2016 he became a scientific advisor to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative , founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan.

Bonhoeffer's work deals with the cellular basis of learning and memory as well as the early postnatal development of the brain. He and his colleagues demonstrated the appearance of “ pinwheels ” in the visual system of mammals with the help of high-resolution imaging techniques. Other works dealt with nerve growth factors , in particular " Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor " (BDNF), the functional reinforcement of synapses , which is reflected in morphological changes in nerve cells by forming new dendritic spines , the targeted breakdown of proteins as a mechanism for the storage of information in the nervous system and thus that many of the cell contacts that have grown during a learning process are only inactivated but not broken down when not in use; as a result, later relearning should take place much faster.

Honors and memberships

Tobias Bonhoeffer received the Ernst Jung Prize for Medicine in 2004 . In 2003 he was elected a member of the Academia Europaea . Since 2009 he has been a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and since 2010 a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina . In 2020 Bonhoeffer was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ORF.at: IST Austria: brain researcher Bonhoeffer becomes first boss ( memento of the original from July 13, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / orf.at
  2. ↑ ORF.at: Elite University: Brain researcher Bonhoeffer but not boss  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / science.orf.at  
  3. ↑ This is how Mark Zuckerberg wants to conquer all diseases
  4. ↑ Bonhoeffer & Grinvald, Nature 1991
  5. ↑ Korte et al., PNAS 1995 & 1996
  6. ↑ Engert & Bonhoeffer, Nature 1999
  7. ↑ Fonseca et al., Neuron 2006
  8. ↑ Hofer et al., Nature 2009
  9. ^ Membership directory: Tobias Bonhoeffer. Academia Europaea, accessed June 20, 2017 .
  10. ↑ Member entry by Tobias Bonhoeffer (with picture and CV) at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on June 30, 2016.
  11. ↑ 2020 newly elected members. National Academy of Sciences, accessed April 27, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Bonhoeffer, Tobias
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American neurobiologist
DATE OF BIRTH January 9, 1960
PLACE OF BIRTH Berkeley , California