[1] In addition to his duties in research and teaching, he served as Chairman of the Biozentrum[2] and as Dean of the Faculty of Science.

[3] Thomas A. Bickle mainly investigated the mode of action of bacterial DNA restriction and modification systems.

These systems protect bacteria from being invaded by foreign DNA, either free or packaged in bacterial viruses.

So-called restriction enzymes (endonucleases) recognize foreign DNA and inactivate these through endonucleolytic cleavage.

Furthermore, he demonstrated that many bacterial viruses have evolved diverse defense mechanisms to avoid restriction.