Martin Heisenberg (born 7 August 1940) is a German neurobiologist and

geneticist A geneticist is a biologist or physician who studies genetics, the science of genes, heredity, and variation of organisms. A geneticist can be employed as a scientist or a lecturer. Geneticists may perform general research on genetic processes ...

. Before his retirement in 2008, he held the professorial chair for genetics and neurobiology at the Bio Centre of the

University of Würzburg The Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg (also referred to as the University of Würzburg, in German ''Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg'') is a public research university in Würzburg, Germany. The University of Würzburg is one of ...

. Since then, he continues his research with a senior professorship at the Rudolf Virchow Center of the

. Heisenberg studied chemistry and molecular biology in Munich, Tübingen and Pasadena. In 1975 he became Professor of genetics and neurobiology at the University of Würzburg. Heisenberg's work has focused on the neurogenetics of ''

Drosophila ''Drosophila'' () is a genus of flies, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "small fruit flies" or (less frequently) pomace flies, vinegar flies, or wine flies, a reference to the characteristic of many speci ...

'' (the fruit fly), with the aim of investigating the genetic foundations of the ''Drosophila'' brain by studying the effect of genetic mutations on brain function. In addition, Heisenberg contributed a number of essays on the topics of science in society, perception, as well as the question of the freedom of the will. He was elected as a member of the Leopoldina in 1989. Martin Heisenberg is a son of the physicist

Werner Heisenberg Werner Karl Heisenberg () (5 December 1901 – 1 February 1976) was a German theoretical physicist and one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics. He published his work in 1925 in a breakthrough paper. In the subsequent serie ...

, who is known for the creation of

quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistr ...

and discovering

uncertainty principle In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle (also known as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle) is any of a variety of mathematical inequalities asserting a fundamental limit to the accuracy with which the values for certain pairs of physic ...

. He is married to Apollonia, Countess of Eulenburg. They have four sons, including film director Benjamin Heisenberg. He is the brother of physicist

Jochen Heisenberg Jochen Heisenberg (born 16 May 1939) is a German physicist specializing in nuclear physics, and Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of New Hampshire. He is the son of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Werner Heisenberg, who was a co-found ...

Distinctions

* 1986/87 Cornelius Wiersma Visiting Professor, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA * 1989 German National Academy Leopoldina * 1998 Academia Europaea * 1999 Academy of Sciences Göttingen * 2001 Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science * 2006 Karl Ritter von Frisch Medal of the Deutsche Zoologische Gesellschaft (DZG) * 2007–2010 President International Society of Neuroethology * 2009 Doctor honoris causa Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse

Publications (selection)

English original research publications (selection)

* M. Heisenberg, A. Borst, S. Wagner, D. Byers: Drosophila mushroom body mutants are deficient in olfactory learning. J. Neurogenetics. 2, 1-30 (1985) * J.S. deBelle and M. Heisenberg: Associative odor learning in Drosophila abolished by chemical ablation of Mushroom Bodies. Science 263, 692-695 (1994) * L. Liu, R. Wolf, R. Ernst, and M. Heisenberg: Context generalization in Drosophila visual learning requires the mushroom bodies. Nature 400, 753-756 (1999) * T. Zars, M. Fischer, R. Schulz and M. Heisenberg: Localization of a short-term memory in Drosophila. Science 288, 672-675 (2000) * M. Schwaerzel, M. Monasterioti, H. Scholz, F. Friggi-Grelin, S. Birman, and M. Heisenberg: Dopamine and octopamine differentiate between aversive and appetitive olfactory memories in Drosophila. J Neurosci 23, 10495-10502 (2003) * S. Tang, R. Wolf, S. Xu and M. Heisenberg: Visual pattern recognition in Drosophila is invariant for retinal position. Science 305, 1020–1022 (2004) * G. Liu, H. Seiler, A. Wen, T. Zars, K. Ito, R. Wolf, M. Heisenberg and L. Liu: Distinct memory traces for two visual features in the Drosophila brain. Nature 439, 551-556 (2006) * J. Rister, D. Pauls, B. Schnell, C.Y. Ting, C.H. Lee, I. Sinakevitch, J. Morante, N.J. Strausfeld, K. Ito and M. Heisenberg: Dissection of the peripheral motion channel in the visual system of Drosophila melanogaster. Neuron 56, 155-170 (2007) * P. Sareen, R. Wolf and M. Heisenberg: Attracting the attention of a fly. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 108, 7230-7235 (2011) * Z. Yang, F. Bertolucci, R. Wolf, M. Heisenberg: Flies cope with uncontrollable stress by learned helplessness. Curr Biol 23, 799-803 (2013) * N.S. Chouhan, R. Wolf, C. Helfrich-Förster, M. Heisenberg: Flies remember the time of day. Curr Biol 25, 1619–1624 (2015)

Books published, Editorship

* M. Heisenberg, R. Wolf: Vision in Drosophila. Vol. XII, of: Studies of Brain Function, V. Braitenberg, Ed., Springer-Verlag Berlin, Heidelberg, New York (1984) * M. Heisenberg (Ed.). Special issue Mushroom body. Learning & Memory 5, (1998)

English reviews and essays (selection)

* M. Heisenberg: Voluntariness (Willkürfähigkeit) and the general organization of behavior. In: Flexibility and Constraints in Behavioral Systems, R.J. Greenspan and C.P. Kyriacou, eds.; pp147–156, John Wiley & Sons Ltd. (1994) * M. Heisenberg: Mushroom body memoir: From maps to models. Nature Rev Neurosci 4, 266-275 (2003) * M. Heisenberg: Is free will an illusion? Nature 459, 1052-1053 (2009) * B. Gerber, H. Tanimoto, and M. Heisenberg: An engram found? Evaluating the evidence from fruit flies. Curr Op Neurobiol 14, 737-744 (2004) * M. Heisenberg: Erich Buchner. J Neurogenet 24,:93-94 (2010) * M. Heisenberg: The beauty of the network in the brain and the origin of the mind in the control of behavior. J Neurogenet 28, 389-99 (2014)

German reviews and essays (selection)

* M. Heisenberg: Initiale Aktivität und Willkürverhalten bei Tieren. Naturwissenschaften 70, 70-78 (1983) * M. Heisenberg: Freiheit aus der Sicht der Verhaltensforschung In: Ordnung und Unordnung. G. Becker, H. Becker, L. Huber, Eds.; pp. 74–82, Beltz Verlag (1985) * M. Heisenberg: Über Universalien der Wahrnehmung und ihre genetischen Grundlagen. In: Mannheimer Forum 89/90 H.v.Ditfurth, E.P. Fischer, Eds.; Bd. 1104, pp. 11–69. Piper München, Zürich * M. Heisenberg: Freiheit als Eigenschaft des Verhaltens. Nova Acta Leopoldina NF 86, 79-95 (2002) * M. Heisenberg: Die Pilzkörper der Insekten – Trojanisches Pferd der funktionellen Hirnforschung? Neuroforum 2, 179-186 (2002)

Academic theses

* M. Heisenberg: Eine neue Genfunktion des Bakteriophagen fr. Dissertation, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen (1966)

About Martin Heisenberg

* Drosophila Neurogenetics: The Heisenberg impact. E. Buchner and C.F. Wu, Eds.; J. Neurogenetics 23, 1-2, (2009)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Heisenberg, Martin Living people 1940 births German neuroscientists German geneticists Heisenberg family