Ernst Bamberg (born November 9, 1940, in Krefeld) is a German biophysicist and former director of the Department of Biophysical Chemistry at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics.

Career

Bamberg earned his PhD in physical chemistry from the University of Basel in 1971 and completed a habilitation in biophysical chemistry from the University of Konstanz in 1976. From 1979 to 1983, he was a Heisenberg fellow and later became head of an independent working group at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt/Main. In 1988, he became an adjunct professor at Frankfurt University, and the university named him a full professor of biophysical chemistry in 1993. He was appointed professor emeritus in 2009. Since 1993, he has also served as a director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics. Additionally, he has been a senior investigator at the Cluster of Excellence Frankfurt (CEF) since 2008.

Research

Bamberg's research focuses on channelrhodopsins. He worked with Georg Nagel and Peter Hegemann, who were trying to find the proteins that allow Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a type of green algae, to move toward light using electric currents caused by light. Bamberg was part of the first team to isolate and describe channelrhodopsin 2 (ChR2). "We had a hard time trying to convince people that it was true," he told Nature later. However, before publishing their first papers showing that algal proteins could create electric currents in eukaryotic cells, they applied for a patent and imagined many possible uses of channelrhodopsins in cells that can be electrically activated, including some medical uses. In 2005, Bamberg and Nagel worked with Ed Boyden, Karl Deisseroth, and Feng Zhang to show that this light-sensitive channel could be used as a tool to control brain cell activity, helping to create the field of optogenetics.

Selected awards

• 1987 Boris Rajewsky Prize in Biophysics
• 2009 Stifterverband Prize from the Stifterverband for the German Science
• 2010 Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences, with Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel
• 2010 Karl Heinz Beckurts Prize for Technological Innovation
• 2011 Member of the Leopoldina National Academy of Sciences
• 2012 K. J. Zülch-Preis from the Gertrud Reemtsma Foundation for neurological basic research, with Peter Hegemann, Georg Nagel, and Karl Deisseroth
• 2013 The Brain Prize from the Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Foundation, with Ed Boyden, Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, Gero Miesenböck, and Georg Nagel
• 2019 Citation Laureate from the Web of Science Group
• 2019 Rumford Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, with Ed Boyden, Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, Gero Miesenböck, and Georg Nagel