Max Planck Institute of Biophysics

The Department of Biophysical Chemistry, directed by Ernst Bamberg, studies the function of these proteins in native or reconstituted membranes by electrophysiological and spectroscopic methods.

In the Department of Molecular Sociology integrative cellular structural biology is studied by cryo-electron microscopy, biochemical and mass spectroscopic methods applied to nuclear pores, macromolecular machines that are responsible for the communication between the cell nucleus and the cytoplasm.

However, it had a predecessor, the "Institut für Physikalische Grundlagen der Medizin" which had been established in 1921 by Friedrich Dessauer, an admirer of Wilhelm Röntgen, who endeavored to apply radiation physics to medicine and biology.

Being a conservative member of parliament for the democratic "Zentrumspartei", Dessauer opposed the National Socialists' rise to power and was then forced to emigrate in 1934.

His successor, Dessauer's colleague and long-standing collaborator, Boris Rajewsky was the first director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Biophysics.

The cell membranes and the proteins were and are being investigated using the most modern physical methods available at the time, including This development was initiated, especially after the retirement of Passow and Ullrich in 1993 and Schlögl in 1996, by the appointment of a new generation of directors, in 1987 by Hartmut Michel (Dept.

The functional new building of the MPIBP on the Riedberg university campus is divided into two halves by an entrance hall running continuously in an east–west direction.