[1] In 1969, he returned to Germany to become a regular teaching and researching professor at the University of Würzburg's Institute for Virology.

[1] Working with Lutz Gissmann, zur Hausen first isolated human papillomavirus 6 by simple centrifugation from genital warts.

[5] He isolated HPV 6 DNA from genital warts, suggesting a possible new way of identifying viruses in human tumours.

This discovery paid off several years later, in 1983, when zur Hausen identified HPV 16 DNA in cervical cancer tumours by means of Southern blot hybridization.

[10] From 2007 to 2011, zur Hausen was a member of the scientific advisory board of Zukunftskolleg at the University of Konstanz.

[8] Zur Hausen shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Luc Montagnier and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, for his discovery of human papilloma virus (HPV) causing cervical cancer [13] The award of the 2008 Nobel Prize to zur Hausen became controversial following the revelation that Bo Angelin, a member of the Nobel Assembly that year, also sat on the board of AstraZeneca, a company that earns patent royalties for HPV vaccines.

[14] However, colleagues widely felt that the award was deserved,[15] and the secretary of the Nobel Committee and Assembly issued a statement affirming that Bo Angelin was unaware of AstraZeneca's HPV vaccine patents at the time of the vote.