Born 1961 in Hamburg. Study of physics at the Universities of Hamburg and Göttingen, diploma with a thesis on high energy physics (1986), work in Ernst Bamberg's group at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics, PhD (1989), postdoc in Santa Barbara, California, with Paul Hansma (1989-1990), researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics (1990- 1996), German Habilitation at the University of Frankfurt (1995), Associate Professor at the Institute for Physical Chemistry at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz (1996-2000), Full Professor for Physical Chemistry, University of Siegen (2000-2002), Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (since 2002).