Max Planck Institute for Biology

The main aim of the newly established institutes was to supplement the universities and academies with research in the natural sciences and thus also to keep Germany internationally competitive.

In the following decades, scientists there and at the Institute of Biochemistry realized the importance of viruses as model organisms for understanding biological processes.

In 1941, Nobel Prize winner Adolf Butenandt, together with his colleagues Alfred Kühn and Fritz von Wettstein, set up their own working group for virus research.

Two years later, parts of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology moved to the safer city of Tübingen.

Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, who was appointed as Director of Department for Genetics in that year, later won the Nobel Prize for Physiology in 1995.