6 Oct 2026
This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, awarded in part to Peter Hegemann for his pioneering contributions to the field of optogenetics, has a special connection to our Faculty.
The scientific foundations of this now highly influential field can be traced back to pioneering work carried out in the early 1990s in Peter Hegemann’s laboratory at the neighboring Max Planck Institute. In 1991, Hartmann Harz and Peter Hegemann published a landmark study in Nature, in which they characterized photoactivated currents in the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas and provided important insights into the function of its rhodopsin photoreceptor. These findings laid essential foundations for the subsequent development of optogenetics.
The significance of this early work is explicitly recognized in the Nobel Assembly’s scientific background summary accompanying this year’s prize.
We are particularly pleased that Hartmann Harz is not only the head of our Center for Advanced Light Microscopy (CALM), but has also been a member of our Faculty for many years. His work thus provides a remarkable link between the pioneering research of the early 1990s and the vibrant scientific activities of our Faculty today.
We are delighted to mark this special occasion together. Hartmann Harz will give the opening lecture of the Current Topics lecture series next Monday, where he will revisit this pioneering work, discuss its scientific significance, and trace its development into the field of optogenetics as we know it today.
We look forward to this special opportunity to explore the history of a research field whose origins are closely connected to our scientific neighborhood and to our Faculty.
Harz H, Hegemann P (1991) Rhodopsin-regulated calcium currents in Chlamydomonas. Nature 351:489-491.
Harz H, Nonnengasser C, Hegemann P, Brownlee C, Sanders D (1992) The photoreceptor current of the green alga Chlamydomonas. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B: Biological Sciences 338:39-52.