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.