Born on December 21, 1950, in Leverkusen. Study of biology and chemistry, doctorate Univ. Göttingen (1981), postdoctoral fellow Yale Univ. and Rockefeller Univ., USA, (1983-1985), Assistant Professor Rockefeller Univ. (1985), junior research group at MPI of Psychiatry, Munich (1986), associate investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Cell Biology Yale Univ. (1991), Professor of Pharmacology and Cell Biology Yale Univ. (1995), Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology Yale Univ. (1997), Director and Scientific Member at the MPI for Biophysical Chemistry (ab 1997; inzwischen Emeritus). Numerous awards including the Max Planck Research Prize (1990), the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (2000), the Ernst Jung Prize for Medicine (2006) and the Niedersächsische Wissenschaftspreis (2010).