Professor Hans-Jürgen Butt

Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Germany

Hans-Jürgen joined the Max Planck Society in September 2002 as one of the directors at the MPI for Polymer Research.

After a physics education at the Universities of Hamburg and Göttingen, he received his Diploma in 1986. His master thesis was on high energy physics. In 1986 he moved to Frankfurt to work in Ernst Bamberg's group at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biophysics on light induced proton transport of bacteriorhodpsin.

In April 1989 he received his Ph.D. from the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-University of Frankfurt. As a postdoc in Santa Barbara, California, with Paul Hansma, he got into contact with the newly developed atomic force microscope.

In 1990, back in Germany at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biophysics, he studied biological objects with the atomic force microscope. In this period the work on surfaces in particular on surface forces became a central issue. He habilitated in 1995.

In 1996 he went to the institute for physical chemistry at the Johannes Gutenberg-University in Mainz as associate professor. There he focussed on the physics and chemistry of interfaces and on polymer physics. Three years later he followed a call to the University of Siegen as full professor for physical chemistry.

Hans-Jürgen is head of the German Colloid Society.