Friedrich Beck

Academic career From 1952 to 1954, Beck worked as an assistant at the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin. He followed a research visit in the U.S. from 1954 to 1956 as a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then went back to the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, where in 1958 he wrote a Habilitation thesis on nuclear reactions as a result of electromagnetic interactions. From 1958 to 1960, he worked as a lecturer both at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and Heidelberg University.

In 1960, Beck was appointed an Associate Professor of Theoretical Physics at Goethe University Frankfurt.

In 1963, he became a Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Technische Universität Darmstadt, where in the same year he took over the management of the Institute for Theoretical Nuclear Physics.

Beck held visiting professorship positions several times. From 1974 to 1975, he taught at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in 1976 at the Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, in 1979 at the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1983 at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, in 1987 at the University of Washington in Seattle, in 1988 at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, and in 1991 at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

After Beck's retirement in 1995, his successor at the Technische Universität Darmstadt became Professor Jochen Wambach.

Collaboration with John C. Eccles Presynaptic neuron A (transmitting) to postsynaptic neuron B (receiving)1. Mitochondrion 2. Synaptic vesicle with neurotransmitters 3. Autoreceptor4. Synapse with neurotransmitter released (serotonin) 5. Postsynaptic receptors activated by neurotransmitter (induction of a postsynaptic potential) 6. Calcium channel7. Exocytosis of a vesicle8. Recaptured neurotransmitter

In 1991, Friedrich Beck met sir John Carew Eccles, a 1963 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, during a summer school in Northern Italy organized by a German foundation for the promotion of outstanding students. In collaboration, they developed a quantum mechanical model of exocytosis and neurotransmitter release at synapses in the human cerebral cortex. The model endorses interactionist dualism and postulates that human consciousness could affect the functioning of synapses in the brain through quantum tunneling of electrons between the lipid bilayers of the synaptic vesicle and the presynaptic membrane. The tunneling of electrons triggers the process of exocytosis and thus initiates the transmission of information from the presynaptic neuron towards the postsynaptic neuron. The model proposed by Beck and Eccles is based on pure quantum tunneling and predicts temperature independence of exocytosis, Nevertheless, recent research has shown that the original Beck-Eccles model could be updated and zipping of SNARE proteins in exocytosis could be triggered by vibrationally assisted tunneling.