Description:

Dieter Oesterhelt (1940–2022) and Mathias Grote (*1978) are of different generations—biochemistry brought them together.

As an up-and-coming scientist Dieter Oesterhelt discovered in 1970 a color change from purple to yellow, and he wanted to know the origin of this change. Already as a child he walked his own way: Rather than reading and learning from others he wanted to understand by doing things himself that others had not done before.

As a result of his endeavors he discovered the prototypical molecular pump bacteriorhodopsin and with it a new type of photosynthesis. Openness for innovative methods, interdisciplinary work, and worldwide cooperations led his group at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried near Munich to become a hotspot for molecular life sciences.