Peter Hegemann

Hegemann was born on December 11, 1954, in Münster, Germany, and grew up in Aachen.⁠[1][2]

From 1975 to 1980, he studied chemistry at the University of Münster and at the University of Munich (LMU); in 1980 he completed his diploma thesis under Dieter Oesterhelt at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, then pursued a doctorate at the institute on the light-driven chloride pump halorhodopsin, receiving his Ph.D. in 1984.⁠[3][3][3][4]

In 1985, he went to the physics department of Syracuse University in New York as a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Kenneth W. Foster, where he was already attempting to biochemically isolate the photoreceptor of the alga Chlamydomonas.⁠[5][2]

From 1986 to 1992, he led an independent research group at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry on “Photoreception of Microalgae,” and in 1992 he completed his habilitation at the University of Munich.⁠[3][3]

He wanted to understand why the single-celled green alga Chlamydomonas reacts so rapidly to light and swims toward it. Using minuscule electrodes to measure the electrical signals produced when light struck the Chlamydomonas eyespot, he found that an electrical impulse occurred just half a millisecond after light reached the eyespot, whereas the process of light transduction in the human eye takes at least 10 milliseconds; in 1991, together with Hartmann Harz of the University of Munich, he showed that light triggers ion currents in Chlamydomonas within a very short time.⁠[6][6][6][5][6][6]

On this basis, in the early 1990s he formulated the hypothesis that a single protein complex in Chlamydomonas both captures light and acts as an ion channel. Since none of the ion channels known at the time could react to light on their own, the idea was met with doubt; and the eyespot proteins were extremely unstable once removed from their natural environment, so attempts to isolate them repeatedly failed.⁠[6][6][6]

From 1993 to 2004, he was professor of biochemistry at the University of Regensburg; from 2000 to 2003 he founded and led the interdisciplinary graduate college “Sensory Photoreceptors in Natural and Artificial Systems.”⁠[3][3]

Around the turn of the century, Japanese researchers published a large amount of Chlamydomonas gene sequence data, in which Hegemann’s group found two genes with significant similarities to known genes for light-capturing proteins; they then contacted Georg Nagel at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt. Nagel injected each of the two genes into frog eggs so that they produced the unknown proteins, and quickly confirmed that they were ion channels opened by light, verifying the hypothesis Hegemann had formulated a decade earlier. The two proteins were named channelrhodopsin-1 and channelrhodopsin-2.⁠[6][6][6][6][6]

In 2002, the team described channelrhodopsin-1 as a directly light-controlled ion channel; in 2003 it described channelrhodopsin-2, which is particularly well suited to controlling the electrical activity of other cells using light. After the two introduced the channelrhodopsin-2 gene into human embryonic kidney cells and hamster kidney cells, the cells produced electrical signals when illuminated; in a paper published in 2003, they proposed that channelrhodopsin-2 could be used as a powerful tool to generate electrical impulses in cells using light. These discoveries provided the molecular basis for optogenetics.⁠[5][6][6][6][5]

From 2004 to 2010, he founded and led the German Research Foundation (DFG) research unit FOR526, “Sensory Blue Light Receptors.”⁠[3]

He was appointed professor of biophysics at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2004 and has been professor of experimental biophysics there since 2005 (as a C4 professor from 2005 to 2012 and a W3 professor since 2012). Also in 2005, Karl Deisseroth and colleagues showed that channelrhodopsin-2 can be used in nerve cells to trigger electrical signals with millisecond precision using light, after which optogenetics profoundly transformed neuroscience.⁠[2][5][3][3][5]

In 2010, he received the Karl Heinz Beckurts Prize for Basic Research and the Wiley Prize for Biomedical Innovation, and founded and led the DFG research unit FOR1279, “Protein-based Photoswitches.”⁠[3][3]

In 2012, he was elected a member of the Leopoldina academy, shared the Zülch Prize for Fundamental Advances in Neurobiology with Deisseroth, Nagel, and Ernst Bamberg, and became a visiting scientist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Farm campus in the United States; from September 2 to 5 of that year, he organized the 103rd Dahlem Conference, “Optogenetics: Challenges and Perspectives,” in Berlin.⁠[3][7][3][3]

In 2013, he received the Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation and the Louis-Jeantet Award in Geneva, and shared the Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Prize (the Brain Prize) with Nagel, Deisseroth, and others.⁠[3][5]

In 2014, he was elected a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences; in 2015 he received the Science Prize of the Mayor of Berlin.⁠[3][3]

Since 2016, he has been Hertie Professor of Neuroscience at Humboldt-Universität. The same year, he shared the Massry Prize with Deisseroth and Gero Miesenböck and hosted the 17th International Conference on Retinal Proteins in Potsdam.⁠[2][7][3]

In 2017, he shared the Harvey Prize with Deisseroth; in 2018 he shared the Canada Gairdner International Award with Deisseroth and Ed Boyden; and in 2019 he shared the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize with Deisseroth, Boyden, and Miesenböck.⁠[7][7][7]

In May 2020, he shared the 2020 Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine in equal parts with Gero Miesenböck of the University of Oxford and Georg Nagel of the University of Würzburg for the development of optogenetics, a technology that “has revolutionized neuroscience.” At the time he was Hertie Professor of Neuroscience and head of the Department of Biophysics at Humboldt University.⁠[8][9]

In September 2021, he shared the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award with Karl Deisseroth and Dieter Oesterhelt for discoveries concerning light-sensitive microbial proteins and the development of optogenetics.⁠[10][10]

In 2022, he shared Columbia University’s Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize with Deisseroth and Miesenböck.⁠[5]

On November 7, 2023, he delivered the 22nd Einstein Lecture Dahlem at Freie Universität Berlin, titled “OPTOBIO Berlin: Designing Biology with Light.”⁠[2]

On October 5, 2026, the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet announced that the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine would be awarded jointly to Hegemann, Georg Nagel of the University of Würzburg, and Karl Deisseroth of Stanford University “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics”. The prize-awarded discoveries were made at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry. The prize amount is 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million), shared equally among the three. Hegemann, then 71, was at Humboldt University of Berlin at the time of the award.⁠[4][4][4][4][4][11][11][12]

The Nobel Assembly traced the starting point of this series of discoveries to Hegemann’s curiosity. Julia von Blumenthal, president of Humboldt University, called him a visionary researcher and said that a new research building for the field of optobiology was being built in Berlin, largely thanks to his commitment.⁠[4][5][5]

The European Research Council (ERC) published congratulations the same day, saying it had funded him through an individual Advanced Grant and a Synergy Grant with two other researchers, for a total of nine years of funding.⁠[13][13]

Hegemann studies natural sensory photoreceptors in microalgae, yeast, and bacteria; he is one of the discoverers of channelrhodopsins, a family of light-activated ion channels, and a co-founder of optogenetics. Hoped-for applications of the technology include the recovery of lost vision and the treatment of Parkinson’s disease and other neurological disorders using deep brain stimulation.⁠[3][2][9][2]

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin: Official website: https://www.hu-berlin.de/ (opens in a new window).⁠[5]