Henning Scheich

Henning Scheich (12 May 1942 – 30 May 2025) was a German brain researcher and psychiatrist. He was director of the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology until 2010 and head of the institute department until 2013.

Life and career Two neighboring Eigenmannia perform the Jamming avoidance response. When a fish with an electric discharge of 400 Hz encounters another fish with the same discharge frequency, one fish shifts its frequency upward and the other shifts its frequency downward. After finishing school at the Geschwister-Scholl-Gymnasium in Düsseldorf, Scheich studied medicine and philosophy at the University of Cologne from 1961 to 1963, at LMU Munich from 1963 to 1964 and from 1965 to 1966, and at the University of Montpellier, France, from 1964 to 1965. He concluded his medicine studies with the State examination at LMU Munich in 1966. From 1967 to 1969, Scheich worked as a PhD student on the human electroencephalogram (EEG) at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry Munich in the department run by Otto Detlev Creutzfeldt. He completed his PhD degree with highest praise (summa cum laude) in 1969. While working on his PhD, he published a series of scientific works on the physiology of the visual system of cats.

From 1969 to 1972, Scheich served as post-doctoral student under Theodore H. Bullock at the University of California, San Diego, USA. Here he participated in the research on the Jamming avoidance response, a characteristic of Behavioral communication among electric fish and on its neurophysiological foundations. From 1972 to 1974, Scheich led a research group at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, on the subject of acoustic communication.

In 1974, Scheich accepted a professorship for zoology and neurobiology at the Technische Universität Darmstadt. Between 1977 and 1985, he undertook field research trips to the Amazon basin, Central Africa and Thailand, where he studied electric fish and the Behavioral communication of birds, that led to the discovery of Ultrasonic hearing. Scheich was guest professor at the Ponce Health Sciences University in Puerto Rico and joined the Australian National University in Canberra, for a research period, during which time he discovered the electric sensory organ of the platypus. Scheich’s tenure as the director of the LIN ended in 2010. During the same year he also retired from the Otto-von-Guericke University. From 2014 to 2018 Scheich has continued his work with his emeritus group.

Scheich died on 30 May 2025, at the age of 83.

Honours and memberships 1995 to 2003 – Vice president of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Science Association 2000 – Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities 2007 – Order of Merit of Saxony-Anhalt 2013 – Golden Book of the City of Magdeburg

Publications on Auditory cortex research