Sackmann Erich

Erich Sackmann

Erich Sackmann did the Diploma (1964) and the Ph.D. in Physics (1964) at the University Stuttgart (with Theodor Förster) and his Habilitation at the University of Göttingen (1973). He was a Member of Technical Staff at Bell Telephone Laboratories and research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen. From 1974 until his retirement in 2003 he served as Professor of Physics and Director of the Biophysics Institutes at the University of Ulm and the Technical University Munich (since 1980).

He served guest professor at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver), at the Stanford University, at the Institute Curie in Paris. He spent a term as Regents Professor at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and guest professor at the ETH Lausanne.

Research Interests

1960-1968: NMR-spectroscopy of organic molecules-Physics of liquid crystals-Photophysik of organic solids. 1970-2003: Physics of biological and biomimetic materials (cell membranes, actin based cytoskeleton, biomimetics of tissue and cell surfaces, biosensors, the physical basis of cell adhesion). Since 2000: Physics of the cell (cell locomotion, micro-viscoelasticity of cells, logistic self-assembly of membrane based functional machines).

Administrational Activites

From 1974–1980: President of the German Biophysical Society and founding member of the Biological Physics Section in the German Physical Society. From 1989-1991: Dean of the Faculty of Physics of the Technical University Munich. From 1988-2000: chairman of the Munich Interdisciplinary Research Project ”: Biological and Artificial Interfaces on Solids".

Awards

2001 Oswald Award of the German Colloid Society 2002: Fellow of the American Physical Society 2006 Stern-Gerlach Medal of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft