Hansjürgen Matthies

Hansjürgen Matthies (6 March 1925 – 22 August 2008) was a German pharmacologist and neuroscientist.

He served as a professor and the Institute Director at the Magdeburg Medical Academy, and was also the director of another academic institute outside the university. Colleagues describe him as "the doyen of Neuroscience in Magdeburg" and more widely in the German Democratic Republic. Towards the end of the war he was captured by the British, and on his release he became a member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands / SED), newly formed in April 1946 in the Soviet occupation zone within what remained of Germany. He embarked on the study of medicine, obtaining his doctorate, which he produced under the supervision of Friedrich Jung, from the Humboldt University of Berlin in 1953. He received his habilitation, a further academic qualification, in 1957.

In 1957 he took over as director (installed from 1957 till 1960 as "acting director") of the Institute for Pharmacology and Toxicology which had been recently established within the Magdeburg Medical Academy. During 1992/93 Magdeburg University underwent a far reaching reconfiguration, which led to its re-emergence with a new name. The Research Institute that Mattheis had founded back in the days of the German Democratic Republic re-emerged in 1991/92 as the Leibnitz Institute for Neurobiology. However, in 1990 Hansjürgen Matthies had reached his sixty-fifth birthday, and this was the year in which he formally retired from his academic responsibilities.

He died in Magdeburg in 2008.

Work

He was the author of 467 scientific publications The focus of his research was on the cellular mechanisms involved in human memory functions.

Awards and honours 1965 Patriotic Order of Merit in Bronze 1968 National Prize of East Germany 1971 Corresponding member (East) German Academy of Sciences 1973 Full member (East) German Academy of Sciences 1989 Outstanding Scientist of the People