I had no plan to study natural sciences after focussing on languages and social studies during my high school years, but I never had second thoughts that enrolling in physics had been the right decision. One motivation for me to pursue a scientific career in physics was the lasting impact one university teacher made on me. At the time, Ernst Becker taught courses in Theoretical Mechanics and Gas Dynamics at the university in Darmstadt. I was captured by his ability to offer lucid explanations for difficult scientific problems, and more so by his upright and respectful personality. I may well have become one of his students, but his early passing brought me to other subject areas after joining Peter Mulser's research group.

I started my research career as a theoretical plasma physicist with studies addressing inertial confinement fusion, a fascinating area of research combining hydrodynamics, radiative transfer, and atomic and nuclear physics, with many similarities to astrophysics. My formative years in Darmstadt and subsequently in Jürgen Meyer-ter-Vehn's research group at the Max-Planck-Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, deepened my conviction that it is beneficial to carry out scientific research by explaining the complex in terms of the simple. This work attitude may not provide quick fixes and its pursuit takes time and stamina. Yet, I am grateful for having been able to remain true to it over the years and experiment with endurance on hard problems. My work earned me a doctorate in Munich and, after working with Peter Fabian at the University of Munich (LMU) for a number of years, habilitation in physics followed in Heidelberg supported by Ulrich Platt and Konrad Mauersberger. Soon afterwards, I transferred this academic degree to the LMU to which I am associated as an external professor while working at the German Aerospace as a Research Physicist.

Science is about gaining insights into the laws governing the outside world. We know the world only through our senses, through observations for that matter. We ask Nature questions and put the lessons learned into a conceptual framework. This allows us to make predictions and formulate refined questions. Besides this scientific method, there is a way of understanding that cannot be obtained by directing attention away from ourselves. The more one realizes that non-conceptual knowing is already part of who we are as human beings, the more it is obvious that the rationalizing mind with its inherent tendency to 'divide and conquer' has fundamental limitations. This insight does not inhibit one's ability to do research, but raises intuitive awareness about interconnections and potential solutions. As Einstein famously remarked: „We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.”

Climate science in particular has utmost relevance for the individual and our environment, which was one motivation to swap research fields to the atmospheric and climate sciences after my PhD. The richness of cloud physical phenomena was another. At the end of the day, despite all the knowledge obtained by means of the scientific method, it is every person's own attitude that is important in dealing with the consequences of anthropogenic climate change. May we all maintain continual awareness of the fact that nothing exists independently, as our lives depend on it.