Roland Wiesendanger

Roland Wiesendanger (born 5 October 1961 in Basel) is a German physicist, specializing in nanoscience.

[1] He has been awarded three times in a row with the ERC Advanced Grant of the European Research Council as first scientist in Europe.

[3] He started studying physics, mathematics, and astronomy[citation needed] at the University of Basel, Switzerland in 1981.

[citation needed] Until his Habilitation degree in 1990, he set up a unique Surface Science Instrument ("NANOLAB-I") which allowed for the simultaneous investigation of the structure, electronic and magnetic properties of surfaces at the atomic scale.

In February 2021, he released a working paper and preprint, non-peer-reviewed publication suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 had escaped from a lab in Wuhan, a story which was picked up by many German news services including TV.