All his life he was deeply concerned about the philosophical and theological implications of physics.
[1] In 1976, he moved to the department of nuclear chemistry at GSI in Darmstadt, Germany, which was headed by Peter Armbruster.
He played a leading role in the construction of SHIP, the 'Separator of Heavy Ion Reaction Products'.
In 1984, he became head of the new GSI project, the fragment separator, a project which opened new research topics, such as interactions of relativistic heavy ions with matter, production and separation of exotic nuclear beams and structure of exotic nuclei.
Among the rewards he received should be mentioned the Röntgen-Prize of the University of Giessen in 1983 and (together with Sigurd Hofmann) the Otto Hahn Prize of the City of Frankfurt am Main in 1996.