Henning Scheich

Life

After finishing school at the Geschwister-Scholl-Gymnasium in Düsseldorf, Scheich studied medicine and philosophy at the University of Cologne (1961–63), Munich (1963–64 and 1965–66) and Montpellier, France (1964–65). He completed his medicine studies by taking the Staatsexamen at the University of Munich in 1966. From 1967 to 1969 Scheich worked as a PhD student on the human electroencephalogram (EEG) at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry, Munich, in the department run by Otto Detlev Creutzfeldt. He completed his PhD degree (summa cum laude) in 1969. While working on his PhD, he also produced papers on the physiology of the visual system of cats.

From 1969 to 1972 Scheich was a postdoctoral student under Theodore H. Bullock, University of California, San Diego, USA. Here he worked on the jamming avoidance response, a communication behaviour characteristic of electric fish, and its neurophysiological foundations. From 1972 to 1974 Scheich led a research group at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, with the theme "Acoustic Communication". In 1974, Scheich took a professorship in zoology, neurobiology, at the Technical University of Darmstadt. Between 1977 and 1985, he also travelled to the Amazon, central Africa and Thailand to investigate the communication behaviour of birds (discovering ultrasound hearing) and electric fish. He was a guest professor at the Ponce School of Medicine in Puerto Rico and spent a research period at the Australian National University, Canberra, during which time he discovered the electric sense in the platypus.

After German reunification and the foundation of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Science Association in 1992, Scheich was appointed director and head of department at the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology (IfN; since 2010 LIN), Magdeburg. With this came the professorship for physiology at the Medical Faculty of the Otto-von-Guericke University. The LIN, stemming from an institute of the Scientific Academy of the GDR (German Democratic Republic), focuses on research into the mechanisms of learning and memory. The research activities of Scheich at the LIN dealt with the organisation of auditory and vocal behaviour in animals and man, and in this context the role of auditory cortex for learning events. In 2003 Scheich instigated the conference series International Conference on Auditory Cortex. Scheich’s tenure as the director of the LIN came to an end in 2010; in the same year he also retired from the Otto-von-Guericke University. Since 2014 Scheich continues his work leading an emeritus group.

Scheich repeatedly underlined the significance of brain research for education and was involved in organizations associated with research support, the self-administration of science and political counselling (e.g. the so-called ‘Blue List’ Committee, the Evaluation Committee of the German Council of Science and Humanities, the Heisenberg Committee of the German Research Foundation, the Health Research Council of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research).

Honors/ Memberships

1995 – 2003 Vice president of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Science Association 2000 Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences 2007 Order of Merit of Saxony-Anhalt 2013 Golden Book of the City of Magdeburg

Publications (Selection)

Editorships