Harald Fuchs looks back at a career in the nanosciences

Beyond disciplinary boundaries

It was a Friday afternoon, and Harald Fuchs was looking forward to the weekend when he got a phone call from Switzerland. At the other end of the line was Gerd Binning from the IBM research laboratory in Rüschlikon, near Zurich. The physicist Fuchs, who had just recently gained his doctorate, was told that he should come to IBM the following Monday to give a talk on the subject of his PhD.

Shortly before this, he had read an article in the "Bild der Wissenschaft" journal about a new type of microscopy. The article said that a fine measuring tip could be used to glide contact-free over the surface of materials and visualise individual atoms. Of course, the 32-year-old Fuchs had no idea at that time that the two researchers at IBM, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, would be awarded the Nobel Prize just three years later, in 1986, for developing scanning tunnelling microscopy. However, he found the article he had read so fascinating that he applied for a position as postdoc in the working group.

"I felt a bit uneasy at the thought of giving a presentation in front of the experts at IBM," Fuchs recalls. He negotiated an extra day for preparation, gave his presentation on the Tuesday - and got the job. He went to IBM for a year and, in the process, laid the foundations for a career which, among other things, earned him not only of membership of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the German National Academy of Science and Engineering but also the Order of Merit, 1st Class, of the Federal Republic of Germany.

But first things first: as a child, Harald Fuchs, who grew up in the State of Saarland, was especially fascinated by his steam engine and by electricity. In his teens, he found nuclear physics exciting. In Saarbrücken he studied Physics and Applied Mathematics. After graduating in Theoretical Physics he began his career at Saarbrücken University Hospital, working on the transportation of diffusible ions in cell membranes. To write his PhD, he moved to the Department of Material Physics at the University of the Saaarland, specifically to the team headed by Prof. Herbert Gleiter, a pioneer in the field of nanotechnology. After the postdoc position at IBM he spent eight years in industrial research at BASF in Ludwigshafen where, among other things, he established scanning tunnelling microscopy for research work on ultrathin organic films for technical applications. In 1993 Fuchs accepted an invitation to move to the University of Münster. If he hadn't done so, the Center for NanoTechnology, whose founding director he is, would not exist today - on that his erstwhile colleagues agree. And it is doubtful whether, without Harald Fuchs, the city of Münster would be calling itself a "nanotechnology centre".

Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Medicine: Harald Fuchs has always looked beyond disciplinary boundaries and established international networks. Accordingly - although a physicist - he is an honorary member of the Chinese Chemical Society and was recently appointed a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is a pioneer in the field of Sino-German research in the nanosciences. Among other things, he was the spokesperson for the first Sino-German Transregio-Collaborative Research Centre, entitled "Multilevel Molecular Assemblies". Around 70 Chinese scientists have undertaken research in his group while writing or after completing their PhDs. Overall, he can chalk up 47 PhDs and habilitations.

The end of April might see Fuchs' last working day as a Senior Professor, but he certainly won't be experiencing any boredom. He will still have numerous duties, for example carrying out technical appraisals and as a member of various academies. Nevertheless, he will certainly find time to show his four-year-old grandchildren the old steam engine which fascinated him so much when he was himself a child. As a grandfather he would be delighted if the twins found the toy just as exciting.

Author: Christina Hoppenbrock

This article is taken from the university newspaper wissen|leben, issue 2, 1 April 2026.

Save the date: On 29 April, the "Symposium on Frontiers in Nano-Science - From Quantum Science to Nanophotonics, Precision Chemistry and Biomolecular Architecture" will take place at the Center for Soft Nanoscience (SoN) in honour of Prof. Dr Harald Fuchs. Further information and the option to register are available at https://indico.uni-muenster.de/event/4024/.

Further information

• "Symposium on Frontiers in Nano-Science" in honour of Prof. Harald Fuchs
• Nano- and Interface Physics Group
• The April issue of the university newspaper as a PDF (in German)
• All issues of the university newspaper at a glance