Werner E.
Reichardt
Werner E. Reichardt (30 January 1924 – 18
September 1992) was a German physicist and biologist Werner Ernst Reichardt
who helped to establish the field of biological
cybernetics. He co-founded the Max Planck Institute
for Biological Cybernetics, and the Journal of
Biological Cybernetics.
Life
As a young student, Werner Reichardt was a pupil in
the laboratory of Hans Erich Hollmann, a pioneer of
Werner Reichardt, 1982
ultra-shortwave communication. Because of his
knowledge he was drafted in 1941 to the German air Born 30 January 1924
force as a radio technician.There he met members of Berlin, Germany
the resistance and established a covert radio connection Died 18 September 1992
with the Western Allies. In 1944 Reichardt was (aged 68)
arrested by the Gestapo and sentenced to death, but Tübingen, Germany
escaped, and hid in Berlin until the end of the war. Nationality German
From 1946 to 1950 he studied physics at Technische Education Technische Universität
Universität Berlin. From 1950 he was a doctoral Berlin
student of Ernst Ruska, studying solid state Fritz Haber Institute
semiconductors at the Fritz-Haber-Institut of the Max- Known for Reichardt detectors[1]
Planck-Gesellschaft, and received his doctorate in Scientific career
1952. From 1952 to 1954 he was an assistant at the
Fields Cybernetics, physics,
Institute where his teacher Max von Laue was a large
biology
influence to his later research. During the war,
Institutions California Institute of
Reichardt had known Bernhard Hassenstein, who had
Technology
studied optomotor turning behaviour after the war.
Max Planck Institute for
Realising these experiments could be formalised in a
Biophysical Chemistry
similar way to electronics experiments, he developed
Max Planck Institute for
interdisciplinary theories of motion perception. In
Biological Cybernetics
1954, Reichardt became a Postdoctoral Fellow at the
California Institute of Technology at the invitation of Doctoral advisor Ernst Ruska
Max Delbrück. From 1955 he was assistant at the Max Other academic Max von Laue
Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in advisors Max Delbrück
Göttingen under Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer. In 1958 he Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer
founded together with Bernhard Hassenstein and Hans Doctoral students Hermann Wagner
Wenking the cybernetics research group at the Max-
Other notable Tomaso Poggio
students (postdoc)
Planck-Institute of Biology in Tübingen. In 1968 the department was transformed into the independent
Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics.
Reichardt died at the age of 68 years after collapsing at the end of a symposium organised in his honour.
Work
Reichardt's findings have contributed to understanding of information processing in nervous systems.
From joint work (with Bernhard Hassenstein and Hans Wenking) on the visual system of insects and its
effect on the flight orientation, the correlation model developed the idea that the visual system of man
could be similarly investigated, and led to a general theory of motion perception
Reichardt detectors
In the 1950s, Reichardt and Hassenstein proposed a model explaining how a neuron, receiving input from
photoreceptors that respond exclusively to changes in luminance, could be used to compute motion. Each
photoreceptor detects changes in luminance at a specific location in visual space. By comparing the phase
shifts of activity in adjacent cells, the model suggests the direction of movement can be determined as it
passes from one neuron's receptive field to another. This concept, known as the Reichardt detector, has
experimental evidence supporting its hypothesized behavior, although the exact the exact circuitry for this
process has yet to be identified.[2]
In honor of Reichardt's pioneering work, the Tübingen cluster of excellence Werner Reichardt Centre for
Integrative Neuroscience (CIN; founded 2007/2008) was named after him.
Honors and awards
1965: Honorary Professor of the University of Tübingen
1970: full member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz
1971: full member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina Hall
1972: foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Cambridge
(Massachusetts)
1978: foreign member of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen,
Amsterdam[3]
1980: Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts,
1984: Senator of the Max Planck Society
1985: HP Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics (together with Bela Julesz)
1988: foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.
1989: foreign member of the American Philosophical Society Philadelphia
1989: Member of the Academia Europaea
1989: honorary doctorate of the RWTH Aachen
References
In memoriam Werner Reichardt (http://www.kyb.tuebingen.mpg.de/?id=145)
1. Reichardt, W. (1961). "Autocorrelation, a principle for the evaluation of sensory information
by the central nervous system". In W.A. Rosenblith (ed.). Sensory Communication. MIT
Press. pp. 303–317.
2. "Max Planck Institut für Neurobiologie | Research | Research Departments | Alexander Borst
| ModelFly Project" (https://web.archive.org/web/20120222000614/http://www.neuro.mpg.de/
30089/modelfly). www.neuro.mpg.de. Archived from the original (http://www.neuro.mpg.de/3
0089/modelfly) on 2012-02-22.
3. "W.E. Reichardt (1924 - 1992)" (http://www.dwc.knaw.nl/biografie/pmknaw/?pagetype=autho
rDetail&aId=PE00002521). Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved
17 July 2015.
External links
/ ~ wreichardt Personal Website of Werner Reichardt (http://www.kyb.mpg.de) for MPI with
vita, list of publications and obituary norm
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