He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1954, following breakthrough research with his assistant Kenneth E. Machin identifying the electric field generated by the African knifefish (Gymnarchus), and the uses which the fish makes of it.

[2] Hans Werner Lissmann was born into a wealthy German family in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, which was then part of Russia.

At the end of the war they were permitted to return home, but by 1922 the family had relocated to Hamburg in Germany, which is where Lissmann received his school-level education.

The focus of his research during his early Cambridge years was on the interplay between movement sequencing, the sensory organs and the nervous systems of animals.

The previous year, on a visit to London Zoo, Lissmann had noticed that the African knifefish (Gymnarchus) was able repeatedly to swim backwards at the same speed and with exactly the same corporeal dexterity around obstacles in its fish tank as when it swam forwards, while avoiding collision.

With these he was able to detect a naturally occurring electric current emanating from the fish, albeit far too weak to be felt by a person.