Institute of Biophysics
After the Second World War, the institute was reopened in 1948 as the "Max Planck Institute of Biophysics". With the retirement of Boris Rajewsky in 1966 and the appointment of Reinhard Schlögl in 1965, the research work was oriented away from work with radioactive radiation towards the investigation of "mass transport through biological and artificial membranes". With the subsequent appointment of Karl Julius Ullrich in 1967 and finally Hermann Passow in 1968 as new directors of the institute, the management of the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics also developed away from the classic one-director institute to a more modern board of directors. The main focus of research was (and still is) the investigation of the cell membrane and its building blocks, the membrane proteins (and especially the transport proteins). The cell membranes and the proteins were and are being investigated using the most modern physical methods available at the time, including