Ernst Bamberg, long-term Director of the Department of Biophysical Chemistry will receive together with Ed Boyden (Boston, USA), Karl Deisseroth (Stanford, USA), Peter Hegemann (Berlin), Gero Miesenböck (Oxford, UK) and Georg Nagel (Würzburg) the renowned Rumford Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the oldest prize (1839) awarded by the Academy.

We are very pleased to announce that Martin Beck from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg will join the Max Planck Society as scientific member. As director at the MPI of Biophysics, he will build up the new department "Molecular Sociology".