Courtesy of Peter Wagner
I left Germany in 1989 for Switzerland. I was always interested in interdisciplinary work, and I enjoy going to places to find smart people. I studied biochemistry and chemistry in Switzerland and Germany. I received a Humboldt Fellowship from Germany to study at Stanford. I arrived in the US in 1995.
When I left Switzerland, I combined three fields: protein engineering with materials science and microsystems technology. That combination was applied at Stanford for the study of molecular motors.
It started in Zurich where I was using ultrasensitive microscopes to see individual atoms. I decided to adapt that to biology, to see biomolecules while they work. I developed the technology early on to investigate individual protein molecules that are [on the scale] of nanometers. I was taking biology out of the context of a living cell and putting it onto materials. To study those molecules, to ...
